Translation Project

I started a new translation project yesterday. I won't tell you what it is and I won't post it here, not to be coy, but because I'm not sure what the rules about such things are (law school has infected my mind already)...I will tell you that my goal is to finish the first chapter by the end of the summer, and then stay up really late one night and make a huge mistake by sending it to the publisher/author as a gift or offering and hope they don't sue and/or laugh at me. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, I wanted to talk about process. So far, I have a first draft of the first section of the first chapter. The first draft is fairly literal, taking into account the word order in the original and the use of prepositions and relative pronouns and the length of sentences and paragraphs. Once the first draft is done, I am going to start a second draft in a new document. The goal of the second draft will be to refine the first draft so it sounds more or less like standard English, and the only remaining departures from familiar idiom are those being intentionally deployed for effect. The third draft, another new document, will tackle the problem of recreating the feel of the original text in English. Successive drafts will follow, as needed, until the summer is over or I am sick of working on it.

As I was mapping out this plan, it occurred to me that the ideal translation -- that mythical beast with iridescent wings and stained glass eyes who flits through our reading minds -- would be a composite of all these drafts, a sort of palimpsest. If I could write on tracing paper and place each revision over the one preceding it, starting with the French original at the very bottom, I could render visible the layers of denotation and connotation composing each phrase. The complexity of meaning would be manifest. And of course, the whole would be totally illegible.

Here's another way of thinking about this -- dictionary.com offers the following definitions for "gloss":

1. A surface shininess or luster

2. A brief explanatory note or translation of a difficult or technical expression usually inserted in the margin or between lines of a text or manuscript

2a. A collection of such notes; a glossary

3. An extensive commentary, often accompanying a text or publication

4. A purposefully misleading interpretation or explanation

5. To give a specious interpretation of; explain away

Moving from literal to figurative meanings, we see a gloss is a decorative layer that adds shine; an artificial coating that conceals fault; a descriptive layer that elucidates meaning; a deceptive layer that conceals meaning by explaining away a problem; or a deceptive layer that misrepresents meaning.

This word evokes our desire for a transparent commentary (or translation) that would act as a lens we could look through to see a text more clearly. But it also betrays our deep mistrust of any screen inserted between reader and text, no matter how alluring or seemingly clear.

I want to write on onion-skin, I want to write a pathway to the center of the text that a reader could walk with her eyes open. But in the end, there will be just one version in black letters on plain white paper and it will have to stand on its own.