Tuesday, February 25, 2014
The Distribution of Credit and Who Should Do What How -- Becky's Questions
As I began reading the "Foreword" and the "Translator's Preface" of _Hagar Before the Occupation/Hager After the Occupation_, I became bothered by the ways Al-Jubouri's text was presented, and I'm not quite sure to what extent this is a fair way to feel. First, I was annoyed that Alicia Ostriker seemed to base her work solely on the English translation, barely even acknowledging the fact that the text had a translator. While perhaps having her stamp of approval on the book in some way validates it and promotes it in a way it deserves, in what ways does Ostriker's intro limit the project? How does her "Foreword" influence the reading of the book?
Secondly, I found myself annoyed by the way that Rebecca Gayle Howell seems very much in a position of superiority compared with her collaborator, Husam Qaisi. For instance, we don't read any words from him in the "Translator's Preface." While I do applaud the collaborative effort between these two translators and the author herself, I'm also not so sure that the book is presented in a collaborative kind of way. Did anyone else feel uncomfortable not getting Qaisi's voice at all? How are we to understand his role of creating "tables that broke the original Arabic poems into cells and rows of words and lines" and "provid[ing] other English synonyms, context clues, and any historical background," in addition to reading Howell's drafts (I mean, wasn't he doing more than just that?)? Shouldn't someone able to work across languages be introducing or providing the translator's note for the text? Who benefits here?
Finally, what does all this suggest about the translator's role when his/her access to the original language is extremely limited?
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Becky, I enjoyed reading your question, but I am just going to respond to Qaisi section. I was also curious about the tables and would have enjoyed learning more specific details about her process. Howell's work offers an interesting contrast to Rothenberg's works (texts we read last week) in the way that she describes her process. There are many unknowns about the facilitation process that we cannot know without further research. Howell might have asked Qaisi if he wanted to write a note, and he might have declined. I like that his name is in the same line on the front of the book next to her name and that a bio paragraph is given for him at the end of the text as well.
ReplyDeleteHi Becky, agp here. I enjoyed this question too. I hadn't thought about the way Ostriker's foreword influenced my read of the text, but as I reread those passages, I was struck by the ideas I took from her and those I left behind. For instance, she talks about the text's doubling/doubles/doubleness in an interesting way, highlighting the way this occurs in title and structure, but I'd forgotten about the way in which she uses this idea of doubles to talk about the artist ("the doubleness of all art") and, I would add, the reader. And, so, it does seem strange that the foreword doesn't include a beat about the potential "doubleness" of translation, an act in which the translator is perhaps (Ostriker's reference to Benjamin here) "[asked] to stand outside of the master narratives of our own culture . . . it demands the other engage in self-questioning" (xi). I also think this is relevant because Howell made some choices in line breaks, repetition, and "religious imagery" that might have influenced Ostriker's read. Connected to this idea of doubleness was absurdity and, as I reflect on my reading of the text, this did not surface as a major theme for me. Maybe the irony Ostriker refers to, but more than anything the insider/outsider tension she explores informed my reading of the text.
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