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Three Poems by Baudelaire, translated by Richard Kutner
Posted Jul 21, 2017 at The Best American Poetry
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Working at the Morgan [by Richard Kutner]
Last December, while searching for some volunteer translation work, I found this description from the Morgan Library and Museum, in New York, on idealist.org: This is a wonderful opportunity for an individual with a serious interest in 19th-century art and literature and a high proficiency in French translation to assist the Cataloguer of the Morgan’s Gordon Ray Collection. Duties include deciphering and translating handwritten letters of luminaries from the worlds of art and literature, conducting research where necessary or appropriate, and preparing concise summaries of the letters for inclusion in CORSAIR, the Morgan’s online collections catalog. I thought, “This is for me,” applied, underwent a six-part background check, and was accepted. Since January, I have been translating and summarizing mostly nineteenth-century French letters by noted authors, artists, scientists, politicians, and other public figures—Balzac, Baudelaire, Dumas (father and son), Condorcet (eighteenth century), George Sand, Renoir, counts, kings, and queens: the list goes on and on. Some of the letters are fairly mundane: “Thank you for your gracious dinner invitation. I will see you at 6:00 on Thursday.” Others involve intrigue about entry into the Académie Française, letters on various subjects from authors to their publishers, requests by generals for troops, lawsuits (many), and complex political, philosophical, or artistic discussions. I have learned a great deal about people I knew about and others I had never heard of. It’s difficult to describe the constant thrill of reviewing documents in the handwriting of someone I’ve read or studied and realizing that I may be only the sixth person ever to have set eyes on them: the author, the recipient, the dealer, the collector, the cataloguer, and me. Writing a summary is sometimes complicated, especially when the handwriting is difficult to read (either illegible or very small), when I’m dealing with a fragment or unsigned document, or there is little or no information about either the author or the recipient. I end up doing a lot of detective work. Is the person who wrote the letter really who the file label says it is? Sometimes it’s a relative, often with the same first and last name. Occasionally, the document turns out to be about the subject, not written by him or her. And at times the author is known by various names. Often I need to research dates and addresses, check to see if the author’s correspondence has already been published (which makes it much easier to read), and look for postmarks. When I suspected that a letter was from Balzac, writing about the woman he would later marry, I went online to see if he had indeed been in Karlsrühe at the time the letter was written. (I was right.) Sometimes there is little or no punctuation, even when it’s a letter from a famous author, and often words are run together. There are people, like George Sand, whose handwriting changed dramatically during their lifetime. And once in a while, French is not the writer’s mother tongue, and there are many errors (for... Continue reading
Posted Jul 20, 2017 at The Best American Poetry
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Translating After the Roundup [by Richard Kutner]
What was it like to translate the memoir of a boy who escaped from a French-Nazi internment camp in 1942? One of my biggest challenges was recreating the exuberant, authentic voice of a scrappy eleven-year-old Paris street kid. I kept asking myself, particularly when translating dialogue, “Does this sound like a child?” I think that being an elementary school teacher for so many years helped me to understand how children think and talk. But kids today do not talk they way they did 75 years ago. I had to learn the street slang of 1940s Paris and put it into English that was appropriate for that period. Paris street slang is particularly spicy, and I needed to make sure that I kept its zing. Sometimes it took many tries to capture the vitality of the language. How, for example, was I going to say, “Je dévale l’escalier à tout berzingue”? I worked on it for a long time and finally came up with “I zoom down the stairs full speed ahead,” which I think captures the energy of the French and keeps the important buzzing “z” sound. Joseph Weismann, the author of After the Roundup, is unusually clearheaded, and his style is extraordinarily lively and direct. It is this very clearheadedness (and his out-of-the-box thinking) that saved his life. It was therefore of the greatest importance to me to use clear, direct language. Like him, I used vivid verbs and sentences that were short and uncomplicated (yet never choppy) to create a strong sense of immediacy. I avoided any language that sounded stuffy or slowed down the pace and force of his words. The greatest challenge perhaps was dealing with overwhelming waves of emotion that I knew I’d have to face once again with every rereading. I have never experienced anything like what Joseph went through beginning in July 1942, when he was rounded up, put in an internment camp, brutally separated from his parents--and then decided to make a daring and difficult escape. In order to cope with this intense emotion, rather than shutting it out, I decided to try to imagine myself in Joseph’s situation, to feel his emotions as much as I possibly could, like an actor preparing a role, so that I could convey them in their full depth. Despite its dark moments, After the Roundup is an uplifting and hopeful book. Joseph wrote it when he was 80, having kept his experiences locked away for 69 years, yet he was able to recall every detail of his ordeal. While some might not consider his style highly intellectual or literary, it clearly reflects his positive outlook and amazing life force. His book makes for compelling reading because of his intelligence, frankness, and energy, not to mention his one-of-a-kind, sometimes hair-raising experiences. It is a lesson for the world of today about what can happen when people are viewed as “others.” After the Roundup is the true memoir of eleven-year-old Joseph Weismann, who was rounded up in... Continue reading
Posted Jul 19, 2017 at The Best American Poetry
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Translating Fear of Paradise [by Richard Kutner]
Translating Fear of Paradise Like any translation, Fear of Paradise was an artistic endeavor and an act of creation. As always, I needed to maintain the author's tone and voice and make the book sound as though it were written in English rather than translated. But Fear of Paradise involved some extra challenges. Most of the novel is set in Puglia, the heel of Italy, a rugged, sunbaked, glorious region of olive trees and fishermen, of deep blue sky and golden cliffs overhanging the green Adriatic. It was important to keep the setting in mind at all times, because in this book it plays a key role in defining the characters’ personalities and directing their thoughts and actions. Furthermore, Belgian novelist Vincent Engel is a master at describing setting. I therefore had to be very careful in choosing words that evoked the landscape just the way he wanted. Vincent’s style is both realistic and poetic, and I worked hard to bring out both these aspects of it, fundamental to understanding the book. European authors tend to write in long sentences and paragraphs (sometimes very long). We avoid doing this in English, so I had to find where I could divide things while still maintaining the beautiful flow of the text. French authors also tend to repeat words, even in close proximity, something we discourage in English. That meant finding just the right synonym with the appropriate nuance to express Vincent’s meaning. In many cases I changed the verb tenses, since they are not used the same way nor have the same implications in English and French. Sometimes I changed words altogether, because what sounded right in French sounded wrong in English. Most of Vincent Engel’s books take place in Tuscany, where the characters are worldly and well educated. In Fear of Paradise, however, they are poor, uneducated, superstitious, and uncommunicative. They hardly speak at all, so whatever dialogue there is must sound realistic and fit each character and situation with no wrong notes. I needed to penetrate the characters’ thinking so that I could use the correct language to express their thoughts and feelings even though they couldn’t. This was a particular challenge. Luigi does not talk like Valentina, and Basilio doesn’t think like Forza, so each person’s way of speaking had to capture his or her character perfectly even if they’re all taciturn. Moreover, the action begins during the rise of Mussolini in the 1920s, continues to the 1940s, and jumps to the 1960s. I had to make sure that the dialogue was always in sync with the times and that it reflected the changes in the characters’ ages and ways of thinking. Fear of Paradise is a haunting book. It stays with you for a long time after you finish reading it. That was one of the reasons I wanted to translate it. Because of the nature of his characters and setting, Vincent used language to create a special music for this book. It was very important to... Continue reading
Posted Jul 18, 2017 at The Best American Poetry
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What Does a Translator Do? by Richard Kutner
Posted Jul 17, 2017 at The Best American Poetry
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