Loosed in Translation discussion

Jessica wrote: "btw, someone is putting together a panel on this topic (translators as protagonists in literature) for the next ALTA (American Literary Translators Assoc) Conference in October."

Cool! Are you going, Jessica?

Yes, I will be there.

The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, and Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, and Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, and a Variety of Helpful Indexes by Adam Thirlwell

Haven't read it, so can't be sure, but I think it probably has several translators in there from the wacky description.

Jessica wrote: "Yes, I will be there."

Please let us know how it goes!

Jimmy wrote: "The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, and Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, and Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, and ..."

Gave me an idea how a novel itself can be written in full in the subtitle alone.

Bleed-over from the Buried Book Club:

Christine Brooke-Rose's Between

It's about a simultaneous interpreter, rather than the literary translators mostly cropping up here, but relevant.

Indeed, very relevant. The reviews make it appear as a text to reckon with.

Zettels Traum by Arno Schmidt

from Wikipedia: "The novel is set in 1968 at 4 AM in the Lüneberg Heath in northeastern Lower Saxony in northern Germany. It follows the lives of Daniel Pagenstecher, visiting translators Paul Jacobi and his wife Wilma, and their teenage daughter Franziska. The story is concerned with the problems of translating Edgar Allan Poe into German."

Ironically, I don't think it's been translated into English yet ;)

Also, it's 1334 pages long.

Translator John E. Woods was supposedly working on it for years (English title: Bottom's Dream), but no pub date was announced. http://www.complete-review.com/saloon...

Rise wrote: "Translator John E. Woods was supposedly working on it for years (English title: Bottom's Dream), but no pub date was announced. http://www.complete-review.com/saloon......."

Great news!

Has anyone noted this one I particularly like because she is a Japanese to American translator:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Thanks, it's already on the list, though it was not yet mentioned here, I think.

This fits the bill, I think: An Unnecessary Woman

"Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, divorced, and childless, Aaliya is her family’s "unnecessary appendage.” Every year, she translates a new favorite book into Arabic, then stows it away. The thirty-seven books that Aaliya has translated have never been read—by anyone. After overhearing her neighbors, "the three witches,” discussing her too-white hair, Aaliya accidentally dyes her hair too blue."

Thanks, Jimmy. My last count is around 115 fictional works featuring translator characters. I bet there are many more out there.

This looks great, Jimmy. Thanks!

Another one:


Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli

"A young mother in Mexico City, captive to a past that both overwhelms and liberates her, and a house she cannot abandon nor fully occupy, writes a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. A young translator, adrift in Harlem, is desperate to translate and publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet who lived in Harlem during the 1920s, and whose ghostly presence haunts her in the city’s subways. And Gilberto Owen, dying in Philadelphia in the 1950s, convinced he is slowly disappearing, recalls his heyday decades before, his friendships with Nella Larsen, Louis Zukofsky, and Federico Garcia Lorca, and the young woman in a red coat he saw in the windows of passing trains. As the voices of the narrators overlap and merge, they drift into one single stream, an elegiac evocation of love and loss."

The protagonist of All Russians Love Birch Trees is a girl studying to be an interpreter. She is a Russian of Azeri origin living in Germany who travels to Israel in the second half of the novel. Needless to say, quite multicultural and interesting.

I don't think it's been translated to any language, but for the people who speak Spanish: El traductor by Salvador Benesdra. It's about a translator who works at a leftist publishing house in Buenos Aires during the early 90s.

any good? Have you read it?

Everybody I know who read it, love it. For the most part, I liked it, but I had some issues with the ideology and the way the main character's girlfriend is basically dehumanized to make some kind of point about power structures and domination.
The novel deals with the economical and political unrest in Argentina during the 90s, and the increasing tension in the workplace because of all the layoffs and the rise of unionization.
In a lot of ways it's autobiographical and has a lot of parallels with the author's own life, especially everything regarding the main character's mental breakdown and paranoia.
Benesdra tried to get it published but was rejected several times because it was apparently too long and complex. In 1996 he killed himself, and the novel was published two years later.

Found out about this thanks to Nate D. posting over in the Buried Books group:

House on Moon Lake by Francesca Duranti (1987) concerns an obsessed Italian translator chasing a forgotten Austrian novel.

The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol - his first work translated into English; the first volume of his Trilogy of Memory - seems to qualify too.

Ha, I was about to plug House on Moon Lake here myself! Thanks Jimmy.

:)

Fascinating topic. As The Translator, was on this morning's Kindle Daily Deal, I came to look here and make sure it is on your list. It is. But when doing a search for "the translator" here, results also gave me

The Translator
The Translator
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur
The Translator
The Translators
The Translator's Diary

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Fascinating topic. As The Translator, was on this morning's Kindle Daily Deal, I came to look here and make sure it is on your list. It is. But when doing a search for "the translat..."

Thanks. Searching for "The Interpreter" also yields so many titles.

More titles I added from http://www.tradwiki.net.br/Obras_de_f...

Malinche by Laura Esquivel
The Last Flight of The Flamingo by Mia Couto
Private Account by Cathie Linz

From NYT, Dec. 23, 2016

GOOD ON PAPER, by Rachel Cantor. (Melville House, $14.99.) When Shira, a struggling academic, is offered what appears to be a plum translation project, she sees a chance to kick-start her career. But she’s not the only one in her family eyeing a new beginning in this novel of second chances: Shira’s gay friend and roommate, Ahmad, hopes to take her daughter, long neglected in favor of her mother’s academic work, away from the city to Connecticut.

Thanks for the title, Greg! The GR synopsis page reveals a bit more on the translator aspect.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Arpan by Park Hyoung-su is another and the relationship between the narrator, a writer and translator into Korean, and the other character, the only surviving person literate in his native tongue, is an interesting one. Difficult to say too much though without giving away the entire plot.

Thank you for bringing our attention to this book, Paul. It really seems hard to find as you have noted in your review of the book and the series it came from

I'm going to reproduce below the list of fiction with translators/interpreters as characters I've collected from the suggestions here and from various sites so far.

Unfortunately I was unable to list down the names of translators (for translated works) and to add a GR page link for each title.

FICTION WITH TRANSLATORS & INTERPRETERS AS CHARACTERS (updated Jan. 5, 2017)

Leila Aboulela – The Translator
César Aira – The Literary Conference; La Princesa Primavera (untranslated)
Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq - Leg Over Leg
Rabih Alameddine – An Unnecessary Woman
Brian Aldiss – The Interpreter, aka Bow Down to Nul (science fiction)
Vassilis Alexakis – Foreign Words
Saud Alsanousi – The Bamboo Stalk
Gina Apostol – The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
Paul Auster – The Book of Illusions
Amadou Hampâté Bâ – The Fortunes of Wangrin
Ingeborg Bachmann – Three Paths to the Lake (see the story “Word for Word”)
Gerbrand Bakker – The Detour, aka Ten White Geese
L. Frank Baum – The Marvelous Land of Oz (see the 7th chapter, “His Majesty the Scarecrow”)
Katharine Beaman – The Translator
Mario Bellatin – Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction
Salvador Benesdra – El traductor (untranslated)
Luciano Bianciardi – La Vita Agra (It’s a Hard Life)
Matt Bondurant – The Third Translation
Christine Brooke-Rose – Between
Anita Brookner – Falling Slowly
William F. Buckley Jr. – Nuremberg: The Reckoning
Italo Calvino – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Rachel Cantor – Good on Paper
Cervantes – Don Quixote
Susan Choi – The Foreign Student
Copi – La Cité des rats (untranslated)
Mia Couto – The Last Flight of The Flamingo
John Crowley – The Translator
Susan Daitch – L.C.
Lydia Davis – The End of the Story
Dicey Deere – The Irish Manor House Murder
Samuel R. Delany – Babel-17 (science fiction)
Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
Sarah Dunant – Transgressions
Francesca Duranti – House on Moon Lake
Jennie Erdal – The Missing Shade of Blue
Laura Esquivel – Malinche
Sheila Finch – Guild of Xenolinguists (science fiction)
Jonathan Safran Foer – Everything Is Illuminated
Anatole France – The Queen Pedauque, aka At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque, aka At the Sign of the Queen Pedauque
Michael Frayn – The Russian Interpreter
Brian Friel – Translations (play)
Anna Gavalda – Someone I Loved
Suzanne Glass – The Interpreter
Terry Goodkind – Sword of Truth (series)
James Grady – Six Days of the Condor (spy thriller)
Graham Greene – Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party
Olga Grjasnowa – All Russians Love Birch Trees
Suzette Haden Elgin – Native Tongue; The Judas Rose (science fiction)
Peter Handke – The Left-Handed Woman
Daoud Hari – The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur
Todd Hasak-Lowy – The Task of This Translator
Donald A. Herron – The Misadventures of Interpreter Sam
Russell Hoban – Riddley Walker
Sheri Holman – A Stolen Tongue (historical fiction)
Nancy Horan – Loving Frank
Uwe Johnson – Anniversaries: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl
Susanna Jones – The Earthquake Bird (thriller)
Ward Just – The Translator
James Kelman - Translated Accounts
Suki Kim – The Interpreter
India Knight – Don’t You Want Me
Dezső Kosztolányi – Kornél Esti
Ahmadou Kourouma – Monnew
Nicole Krauss – The History of Love
Julia Kristeva – Possessions
Jaan Kross – Treading Air (see Chapter 33)
Jean Kwok – Girl in Translation
Jhumpa Lahiri – Interpreter of Maladies (see titular story)
Wally Lamb – I Know This Much Is True
John le Carré – The Mission Song; A Perfect Spy; The Russia House
Hervé Le Tellier – Eléctrico W
Ben Lerner – Leaving the Atocha Station
Doris Lessing – The Summer Before the Dark
Gwyneth Lewis – Keeping Mum (poetry)
Cathie Linz – Private Account (Candlelight Ecstasy Romance, #242)
David Lodge – Small World
Valeria Luiselli – Faces in the Crowd
Thomas Mann – Doctor Faustus (minor character as translator)
Peter Manseau – Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter
Diego Marani – New Finnish Grammar; The Last of the Vostyachs; The Interpreter
Javier Marías – All Souls; Dark Back of Time; Bad Nature; A Heart So White; Your Face Tomorrow (3 vols.)
Vanina Marsot – Foreign Tongue
Harry Mathews – The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium; The Human Country: New and Collected Stories (see “The Dialect of the Tribe” and “Remarks of the Scholar Graduate”)
Aaron Megged – The Flying Camel and the Golden Hump
Pascal Mercier – Night Train to Lisbon; Perlmann's Silence
Anne Michaels – Fugitive Pieces
Andrew Miller – Oxygen
Nicole Mones – Lost in Translation
Robert Moss – The Interpreter (historical fiction)
Antonio Muñoz Molina – El jinete polaco (untranslated)
Haruki Murakami – Pinball, 1973
Iris Murdoch – Under the Net
Andrés Neuman – Traveller of the Century
Dorthe Nors – Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
Joyce Carol Oates – The Tattooed Girl
Yoko Ogawa – Hotel Iris
Park Hyoung-su – Arpan
Ann Patchett – Bel Canto
Alan Pauls – The Past
Matthew Pearl – The Dante Club
Sergio Pitol – The Art of Flight (volume 1 of Trilogy of Memory)
Jacques Poulin – Translation Is a Love Affair
E. S. Purnell – The Mistress
David Quantick – The Mule
Piers Paul Read – A Season in the West
Gord Rollo – The Translators
Juan José Saer – Scars
Arno Schmidt – Bottom’s Dream
Nina Schuyler – The Translator
Carol Shields – Unless
Mikhail Shishkin – Maidenhair
Marivi Soliven – The Mango Bride
José Carlos Somoza – The Athenian Murders
Adam Thirlwell – The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, and Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, and Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, and a Variety of Helpful Indexes, aka Miss Herbert
James Thurber – The Thurber Carnival (see “The Black Magic of Barney Haller” and “What Do You Mean It Was Brillig?”)
Rose Tremain – The Way I Found Her
Ludmila Ulitskaya – Daniel Stein, Interpreter
Mario Vargas Llosa – The Bad Girl
Luís Fernando Veríssimo – Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans
Boris Vian/Vernon Sullivan – I Spit on Your Graves; The Dead All Have the Same Skin
Paolo Volponi – Last Act in Urbino
Peter Waterhouse – Language Death Night Outside: Poem. Novel
Barbara Wilson – Cassandra Reilly Mystery series
Jeannete Winterson – Written on the Body
A. B. Yehoshua – The Liberated Bride
Banana Yoshimoto – NP

Cool list! Nice to see it all together.

One to add The Mule by David Quantick, an Umberto Eco like comic-thriller starring a translator of European fiction.

Paul wrote: "One to add The Mule by David Quantick ..."

A "comical thriller" with a translator and an untranslatable book (à la The Voynich Manuscript?) should be very unique.

Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor

For the fantasy fans out there, the entire Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind concerns Richard, a hero whose path is often shaped by his becoming a translator of High D'Haran into modern language. The Mord-Sith Bernice provides critical support more as his first translator than as his bodyguard.

Thanks, Jonathan. Added to the list (message 83).

Ben Lerner – Leaving the Atocha Station

"Mirror, Shoulder, Signal" by Dorthe Nors. A 40 something single woman who translates Swedish crime novels & wants to get her driving licence in Copenhagen.

Great suggestion, Tony. I'll be interested what the MBIP Shadow Jury thinks of it.

Finished it today and I must admit I wasn't too impressed. The role as a translator was one of a number of things that seemed to be clumsy metaphors for the protagonist's life (as with the driving lessons from which the novel takes its title).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it, Paul.

I published my thoughts today, different to Paul's.

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal – Dorthe Nors (translated by Misha Hoekstra) @ Messenger's Booker (and more)
https://messybooker.wordpress.com/201...

Oliver VII by Antal Szerb may not have a translator character but it was presented as a translation of a book from a non-existent English writer.

The protagonist of Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli is a translator also... or maybe she's an interpreter since she's not translating anything in written form, but that probably counts too.

The Interpreter, by Susanne Glass (this book inspired the epynomous movie by Sydney Pollock starring Nicole Kidman)

One of my favorite romantic suspense series (usually with a lot of action) has a translator MC: Forever Betrayed by Kathleen Brooks

I think I read another two but can't remember the titles. I'll brows my lists and when I remember them I'll add them here as well.

Mend the Living (aka The Heart) by Maylis de Kerangal has a character that is a translator

62: A Model Kit by Cortazar, the main character Juan is an interpreter.