Inattention to translation is not limited to prizes for translated literature; it is also found in reviews of translated books. As an exercise, I surveyed reviews of translated literary fiction and poetry in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the Australian Book Review over the course of 2023.2 I wanted to see how much translated literature was reviewed, and how it was done. What did the reviewers notice?
In terms of the frequency of reviews, the winner by a country mile was the NYRB, with thirty-two reviews of translated literary fiction and poetry over twenty issues (and another eight reviews of translated non-fiction). It was difficult to find an issue where there was not at least one review of translated literature. The LRB was no slouch either, with twenty-six reviews of fiction and poetry over twenty-four issues (and another seven reviews of non-fiction). The ABR trailed a long way down – at only nine reviews of translated literary fiction and poetry over twenty-two issues (and another seven non-fiction). Notably, only the NYRB included the source language in the review titles. The fact that the other journals did not is often problematic; a curious reader has to look for clues to discover the original language in which the book under review was written. Overall, the review articles fell into three categories: those that focused on a single book; those that focused on the work of a single author, with more than one translated book by the same or various translators; and reviews of recent re-translations of well-known (usually old) books.
Of the thirty-two NYRB reviews, nineteen of them discuss the translation, many in detail. This compares to thirteen of the LRB’s twenty-six reviews, and only three of the ABR’s nine reviews. The other reviews either do not mention the translation at all or make an unsubstantiated comment (‘ably translated by’, ‘superbly translated by’, an ’elegant’, ‘meticulous’, ‘capable’, ‘dexterous’, ‘perfect pitch, ‘fluid’, ‘flawed’, or ‘readable’ translation, and so forth). When I say ‘unsubstantiated’, I mean that the reviewers do not explain how they arrived at their judgement: they are merely making a passing comment on the English and how it reads to them. The prose or verse reads elegantly, so it is an ‘elegant translation’. But the translation and how the English reads are not the same thing. One might rather say, ‘here is an example of the translator’s elegant solution to rendering such-and-such’, showing some thought about the translation. (Sometimes I wonder whether part of the problem in talking in English about translation isn’t the word itself, which can refer ambiguously to both process and product. In the language I translate from, Indonesian, there is a distinction between the act, penerjemahan, and the end result, terjemahan. I am sure this distinction is true of many other languages.)
In the most engaging reviews, we follow the reviewer’s thoughts about the challenges of the particular translation under review and their familiarity with the original language. They comment on choices made. They ask interesting questions. We learn something. Take, for instance, the novelist Anjum Hasan’s review in the NYRB of the IBP prize-winning book, Tomb of Sand, by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Hasan praises the translation for its ‘recreation of Shree’s animated, conversational, on occasion rambling style’, and gives examples. She points out the novel’s language play and the translator’s handling of this, and again gives examples. She talks about translation in general and how ‘a book and its translation inevitably speak to different things in their separate literatures’, and then gives examples of how this book and its English translation do that. This is a review that teaches the reader about the original and makes you want to read the translation.
Writer and critic Anahid Nersessian similarly moves between the general and the particular in her insightful reviews. Her NYRB essay, ‘The Republic of Translation’, discusses two books of translated poetry from two different authors and two different languages (Italian/Sardinian and French). Drawing her attention back from close discussion of details in the original texts (idiom, rhythm, acoustics, word connotations), she praises Lindsay Turner’s translation from Stephane Bouquét’s French as ‘a whole new object, neither original nor variant, but a lustrous synthesis of sensibilities’. This is high praise, but her review shows us how she came to this view. She can also be wonderfully direct in her criticism. Reviewing two books by Meret Oppenheim – one translated by Lisa Wenger and Martina Corgnati, the other by Kathleen Heil – for the LRB, she again pays close attention to detail and isn’t fooled by the translator’s claims to creative license: ‘There is creative translation or what Heil calls “seizing freedom from the language one is working with”, and then there is making stuff up.’
Veteran reviewers like Parks and Michael Hofmann, renowned translators themselves, always have interesting things to say in their reviews of translated fiction. Apart from general discussion of the (original) book, its author and context, there is analysis of style – tone, voice, idiom and rhythm, for instance – and any other idiosyncrasies – use of dialect, profanity, colloquialism, humour – as well as commentary on how the translator has navigated the challenges of rendering these stylistic characteristics. Both sides of the work – the book and its translation – are considered, sometimes sharply. In his review of Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson’s translation of a Thomas Brussig novel in the NYRB, Hofmann rips the original book apart, then asks the all-important (but so rarely asked) question, ‘why translate it?’ He gives an example of East German slang rendered as Kansas English, and comments on wordplay. ‘Sometimes’, he says, ‘the language is telling us, “Uh-oh, don’t touch this,” and then it’s probably worth listening.’
One part of the reviewing world where close attention is paid to creative choice in translation – indeed, to creative choice as the art of translation – is the case of re-translation. This is where we do find recognition, and celebration, of myriad possibilities in rendering a text into another language. This is exactly where we delight in reading and hearing the familiar in a new way, as with Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, or Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. Reviews of re-translations proceed from the awareness of difference between the original (the worth of which has been established by the very fact of its perpetuity) and its translated renditions – and perhaps it is not surprising that these reviews can be so illuminating about translation in general. The existence of previous translations pushes the reviewer to look not just for ‘fluidity’ or ‘smoothness’ in the translated text, but also for how this new version might make us think about context and interpretation. A wonderful example of this is Michael Wood’s review of Brian Nelson’s 2024 translation of the first volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, The Swann Way, alongside James Grieve’s translation, Swann’s Way, first published in 1982. Wood offers deep reflections on changes in interpretation not just of the literary work, but of the entire social world that shaped it. The reprinting of Grieve’s version, Wood says, ‘is a perfect invitation to time-travel in the world of translation’. He adds:
