On Self-Translation

Ilan Stavans

Description

Finalist for the 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Essay category

From award-winning, internationally known scholar and translator Ilan Stavans comes On Self-Translation, a collection of essays and conversations on language in its multifaceted forms. Stavans discusses the way syntax is being restructured by texting and other technologies. He examines how the alphabet itself is being forgotten by the young, how finger snapping has taken on a new meaning, how the use of ellipses has lapsed, and how autocorrect is shaping the way we communicate. In an incisive meditation, he shows how translating one's own work reinvents oneself in another tongue. The volume includes tête-à-têtes with Pulitzer Prize–winner Richard Wilbur and short-fiction master Lydia Davis, as well as dialogues on silence, multilingualism, poetry, and the durability of the classics. Stavans's explorations cover Spanish, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and the hybrid lexicon of Spanglish. He muses on the meaning of foreignness and on living and dying in different languages. Among his primary concerns are the role and history of dictionaries and the extent to which the authority of language academies is less a reality than a delusion. He concludes with renditions into Spanglish of portions of Hamlet, Don Quixote, and The Little Prince. The wide range of themes and engaging yet informed style confirm Stavans's status, in the words of the Washington Post, as "Latin America's liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast."
Preface

Part I. Meeting the “I”

On Self-Translation

Part II. Meditations

Alphabetizing

As It Were

Parable of Don Quixote

Finger Snapping

The Tenure Code

Transadaptation

Ellipses and I

On Clarity

Auto-Corrected

Part III. Beyond Words

On Being Misunderstood

Against Representation: A Note on Borges’s Aleph

The Monkey Grammarian

Midrash on Truth

Don Quixote in Schlemieland

Dying in Hebrew

The Reading Life of Ricardo Piglia

Adiós, Chespirito

Part IV. On Fútbol

“Sudden Death”

Van Persie’s Goal

Box of Resonance

Part V. Language and Politics

Trump and the Wall

Why Doesn’t English Have an Academy?

Shakespeare in Prison

The Spanish Language in Latin America since Independence

Against “Diversity”

Rolling One’s R’s

Part VI. Conversations

The Poet’s Alchemy (with Richard Wilbur)

On Silence (with Charles Hatfield)

Translating Cervantes (with Diana de Armas Wilson)

The Color of Existence (with Ryan Mihaly)

The Downpour of Inspiration (with Asymptote)

The Translingual Sensibility (with Steven G. Kellman)

Rescuing the Classics (with Lydia Davis)

Part VII. Onto Spanglish

Un Walker en Nuyol

Hamlet, Acto 2, Scene Dos [fragment] and Acto 3, Scene Uno

El Little Príncipe, Chapters I–IV

Don Quixote, Parte II, Chapter 72

Spanglish and the Royal Academy

About the Author
Index

Sujets

• Latin American
• Latin America
• Caribbean

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438471501
• Langue: English

Extrait

ON SELF-TRANSLATION
Also by Ilan Stavans
Fiction The Disappearance * The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories
Nonfiction The Riddle of Cantinflas * Dictionary Days * On Borrowed Words * Spanglish * The Hispanic Condition * Art and Anger * Resurrecting Hebrew * A Critic’s Journey * The Inveterate Dreamer * Octavio Paz: A Meditation * Imagining Columbus * Bandido * ¡Lotería! (with Teresa Villegas) * José Vasconcelos: The Prophet of Race * Return to Centro Histórico * Singer’s Typewriter and Mine * Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years, 1929–1970 * The United States of Mestizo * Reclaiming Travel (with Joshua Ellison) * Quixote: The Novel and the World * Borges, the Jew * I Love My Selfie (with Adál) * Sor Juana
Play The Oven
Conversations Knowledge and Censorship (with Verónica Albin) * What Is la hispanidad? (with Iván Jaksić) * Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations (with Neal Sokol) * With All Thine Heart (with Mordecai Drache) * Conversations with Ilan Stavans * Love and Language (with Verónica Albin) * ¡ Muy Pop ! (with Frederick Aldama) * Thirteen Ways of Looking at Latino Art (with Jorge J. E. Gracia) * Laughing Matters (with Frederick Aldama)
Children’s Book Golemito (with Teresa Villegas)
Anthologies The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature * Tropical Synagogues * The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays * The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature * Lengua Fresca (with Harold Augenbraum) * Wáchale ! * The Scroll and the Cross * The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories * Mutual Impressions * Growing Up Latino (with Harold Augenbraum) * The FSG Books of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry * Oy, Caramba!
Poetry The Wall
Graphic Novels Latino USA (with Lalo Alcaraz) * Mr. Spic Goes to Washington (with Roberto Weil) * Once @ 9:53 am (with Marcelo Brodsky) * El Iluminado (with Steve Sheinkin) * A Most Imperfect Union (with Lalo Alcaraz) * Angelitos (with Santiago Cohen)
Translations Sentimental Songs , by Felipe Alfau * The Plain in Flames , by Juan Rulfo (with Harold Augenbraum) * The Underdogs , by Mariano Azuela (with Anna More) * Lazarillo de Tormes * El Little Príncipe , by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Editions Cesar Vallejo: Spain, Take This Chalice from Me * The Poetry of Pablo Neruda * Encyclopedia Latina (4 volumes) * Pablo Neruda: I Explain a Few Things * The Collected Stories of Calvert Casey * Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories (3 volumes) * Cesar Chavez: An Organizer’s Tale * Rubén Darío: Selected Writings * Pablo Neruda: All the Odes * Latin Music (2 volumes)
General The Essential Ilan Stavans
ON SELF-TRANSLATION
Meditations on Language
ILAN STAVANS
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS
Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Stavans, Ilan, author.
Title: On self-translation : meditations on language / Ilan Stavans.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2018] | Series: SUNY series in Latin America and Iberian thought and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index
Identifiers: LCCN 2017054959 | ISBN 9781438471495 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438471501 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Self-translation.
Classification: LCC P306.97.S45 S728 2018 | DDC 418/.02—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054959
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
—George Orwell, 1984
CONTENTS

Preface
PART I: MEETING THE “I”
On Self-Translation
PART II: MEDITATIONS
Alphabetizing
As It Were
Parable of Don Quixote
Finger Snapping
The Tenure Code
Transadaptation
Ellipses and I
On Clarity
Auto-Corrected
PART III: BEYOND WORDS
On Being Misunderstood
Against Representation: A Note on Borges’s Aleph
The Monkey Grammarian
Midrash on Truth
Don Quixote in Schlemieland
Dying in Hebrew
The Reading Life of Ricardo Piglia
Adiós, Chespirito
PART IV: ON FÚTBOL
“Sudden Death”
Van Persie’s Goal
Box of Resonance
PART V: LANGUAGE AND POLITICS
Trump and the Wall
Why Doesn’t English Have an Academy?
Shakespeare in Prison
The Spanish Language in Latin America since Independence
Against “Diversity”
Rolling One’s R ’s
PART VI: CONVERSATIONS
The Poet’s Alchemy (with Richard Wilbur)
On Silence (with Charles Hatfield)
Translating Cervantes (with Diana de Armas Wilson)
The Color of Existence (with Ryan Mihaly)
The Downpour of Inspiration (with Asymptote )
The Translingual Sensibility (with Steven G. Kellman)
Rescuing the Classics (with Lydia Davis)
PART VII: ONTO SPANGLISH
Un Walker en Nuyol
Hamlet , Acto 2, Scene Dos [fragment] and Acto 3, Scene Uno
El Little Príncipe , Chapters I–IV
Don Quixote , Parte II, Chapter 72
Spanglish and the Royal Academy
About the Author
Index
PREFACE

In Paterson (1946), William Carlos Williams eloquently writes:
We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech
“The stream that has no language” is an ongoing obsession of mine. Are the words we have at our disposal enough to convey the complexity of life? Why do some languages have more words than others? And how do we say what cannot be said?
The essays and conversations in this volume, which I have collectively called meditations, require no further elucidation. They were prompted by invitation of an assortment of editors. I have tried to organize them cohesively around a series of themes.
The exploration of self-translation is autobiographical in that it delves into the conundrum of my multilingual self. Am I one or more persons, each in a different tongue? The pieces in Part II discuss how the alphabet is becoming a casualty of modern technology and other hindrances, the meaning of finger snapping, translation as adaptation and vice versa, the secretive language of tenure, and what we say through ellipses. They also delve into the limits of clarity and auto-correction. “Beyond Words” is about being misunderstood, about words as friends, and about the limits of representation. Part IV seeks to elicit the poetry of sports. “Language and Politics” reacts to the impoverishment of language in the political sphere, which is neither new nor terminal. It also explores the way language is a depository of memory. Part VI is made of dialogues with poets and scholars; they are mostly about the classics and about the possibility, as the Sefer ha-Zohar suggests, that before the world was created words were already around. And “Onto Spanglish” returns to lifelong concerns of mine: linguistic pollution and the birth of language.
I end with a confession: I’m an inveterate lover of the essay form, particularly in English. It is succinct, feisty, and decisive. I enjoy the fact that the word “essay” derives from the French “ essayer ,” to rehearse, and from the Latin “ exagium ,” meaning weighing, and exigere, to ascertain. To write an essay is for me to rehearse a line of argument. Invariably, I don’t know what I think until my thoughts acquire form on the page. To reach that point, I ponder, I meander, and I establish. It is all a dialogue, of course, with myself and with others.
To think is to live. And to live is to let out the stream of words and silences that is us. A single day without writing is a day lost in time.
—July 12, 2018
PART I
MEETING THE “I”
ON SELF-TRANSLATION

“It’s like opening one’s mouth and hearing someone else’s voice emerge.”
—Iris Murdoch
In 2001 I published On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language , in which I reflected on the lives I had lived in Yiddish, Spanish, Hebrew, and English. In the years since, I have often reflected on those reflections, as well as on various facets of my experience that I couldn’t fully address in the book. I want to concentrate here on one of those facets—namely, on self-translation. But I will have to begin more generally, by exploring the link between language and epistemology.
I firmly believe that how one perceives the world in any given moment depends on the language in which that moment is experienced. Take Yiddish, which is, at its root, a Germanic language, but is strongly influenced by Hebrew. It also features Slavic inclusions. These distinct elements give the language a taste, an idiosyncrasy. The life I lived in Yiddish was defined by the rhyme, the cadence of the sentences I used to process and describe it. But this wasn’t my only life. I was born in 1961 in Mexico City into an immigrant enclave of Eastern European Jews, and so began speaking Spanish right alongside Yiddish. I have two mother tongues— di mame loshn and la lengua maternal . Both shape my viewpoint. Eating in Spanish—dreaming, lo