Questioned on Translation: Adrift
I gave you “Afterword” to read, and you sent me questions. At first reading, three questions stand out. Let me think around them. You ask me if I see myself as a cultural broker? How about Esperanto-style stuff? How about translation of discursive formations?
Cultural Broker
I believe becoming a cultural broker has been an unintended consequence of my translating Mahasweta Devi, but surely not Jacques Derrida? And what “culture” does Mahasweta represent?
“Describe some of your own experiences as a translator,” you tell me. Now I feel as I did when I took my first written exam for my driver’s license in 1967. How can these questions be answered as they are posed, I worried. I provided philosophically unassailable answers. I failed the exam. In other words, I had failed in the task of (low-level) epistemic translation, from the subject of the Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles to a young academic reading Derrida. I am failing again to translate from the subject of a colleague interested in me as a translator and my stereotype of myself, unavailable to me as “translator.” Do I have “experiences” specifically as a translator? “Describe the importance of this work to your theoretical reflections,” you say. Do you know I never reflect theoretically; unless you count my “timed backups” from time to time, asking myself precisely what it is that I’ve been up to.
End of Excerpt | Access Full Version