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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Mayhem

"La implacable crítica de Mayhem forma parte de un largo y pertinaz paradigma según el cual la traducción y, en particular, la traducción literaria es, por definición, una sombra del original o incluso una falsa versión de este."

This seems to be a false inference. For example, any criticism at all of a translation would seem to follow this paradigm, insofar as it finds that a translation is insufficient in any way. In reality, though, everyone recognizes that translations vary in their approaches, and that even "creative" approaches vary in their success.  

In reality the + [plus] model and the - [minus] model of translation both depend on an ability for the reader to scrutinize the original and the translation side by side. Of course it seems hipper to say that the translation is more than the original, not less, but is this always the case? Just enumerating the ways in which translations fail is quite dull, but that was never my project in the first place. I do find it interesting how they fail in predictable ways, or how these failures line up with predictable cultural oversimplifications. Only a few other people have read my book and concluded that my idea is that Americans have gotten Lorca wrong.    


 I am trying to think of a way I could have written the book without some recognition of Lorquian kitsch in the American reception? This element is one of the main themes running through this reception. 


I'm sure that he knows how to spell my name, since it appears correctly in other places in the text and in the bibliography. It is still a bit funny though, since mayhem is a word that means violent destruction and disorder, and can be found easily by flipping over the last letter of my name. 

1 comment:

Leslie B. said...

Well, it is a hilarious, if unchosen heteronym... it really doesn't fit what your personality seems to be very well, so it is marvelous.