Translators and Sidewalks: More Overlap Than You Might Think

As a full-time professional French to English Translator for over a decade, I've come to believe that we translators and our translations are like sidewalks. Before I explain, allow me a slight detour.

My first awareness of translation and translators was through a satiric comedy that I never actually saw, at whose center was a fictionalization of a real-life translator. The play starred Meryl Streep in what was one of her last roles while a student at the Yale School of Drama before moving on to unrivaled acclaim in the New York theatre and beyond. My then-acting teacher, who attended Y.S.D. with her, appeared in a supporting role.

Meryl played Constance Garnett, the somewhat ubiquitous translator of the greatest 19th century Russian authors from the Russian into English. The play though depicts Garnett as a pompous, aging, dotty woman who not only confuses characters and genres but intentions and storylines.

If nothing else, I was reminded of the peculiar ambiance of that play from the hullabaloo that erupted over the withdrawal of the anticipated Dutch translator of Amanda Gorman's first book of poetry. According to a thorough dissection of this whole episode by Haidee Kotze, a Netherlandic linguistics professor, author and poet, critics of this move fall into two (familiar) camps, united in their affront against yet another instance of "cancel culture." Some have disputed the idea of making Gorman and her work as something precious and removed, like a work of art from a foreign culture that must be treated with the utmost delicacy, expertise and precision. Others have taken this idea to its "logical" conclusion, as if any and all translation must now only be performed by persons who match the authors demographically and historically.

I myself am genderqueer, or non-binary, like the "cancelled" translator, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. They are an accomplished author and poet, and just last year were awarded the Booker Prize, a first for a Dutch national. The uproar arose though in reaction to an op-ed that appeared in a major Dutch media outlet penned by Janice Deul, a Surinamese-Dutch activist, journalist, and curator (recently translated into English by Kotze with Deul's consent). She very simply pointed out the lack of opportunity for and visibility of Black Netherlandic spoken word artists to participate in the predominant culture either as makers/creators and/or translators/interpreters in context of this commission. 

Back to the sidewalk analogy, as that's the image that comes to my mind most glaringly here. Just like the work we perform and produce, we T&I professionals are infrastructure, walkways between fixed cultural points. And believe me, that style of shoe so fits my colleagues and I: my Twitter feed runs the gamut between anal beyond belief and humble enthusiasm regarding translation, language, and all that intertwines them. We spend our days (and yup, nights) sweating and bathing in the minutiae of language. 

We stake out and clear smooth paths through the sometimes opaque intentions of writers, authors, and others. Even in the most ideal circumstances, we must cut through grammatical and imperfectly edited thickets. We aim to give readers crisply, clearly and unambiguously natural-sounding texts that seem to have been originally written in whatever language into which we translate.

Most people understandably don't give much thought to sidewalks until they break their necks or something of similar value on one. And who doesn't like or prefer a clean sidewalk over a filthy one? So it's natural to want and expect a high-quality translation by hiring a translator who's highly experienced and well-regarded. Business though enters into the equation, in particular the "as usual" kind. Amanda Gorman's trajectory is awe-inspiring but also a kind of affront to the white heteronormative hierarchy, "white supremacy" figuaratively and literally.

It makes sense then that the publisher seemed to assume that Gorman would be unknown to a (perceived) mass/mostly white Netherlandic audience, therefore the "natural" choice of a well-known, successful author/translator. Culture though is as much about appearances as it is underlying truths. The comfort factor then arises, the image of the one chosen to lead the readership down as smooth and pristine (white) a sidewalk as possible. And given the persistent invisibility of trans fok, Rijneveld maybe "appeared" all the better to disappear with pristine prestige into Gorman's translated poetry.

No small irony then that the best reaction to the controversy ignited by Rule might in fact be Rijinveld's. After withdrawing, she wrote a poem whose English translation was published earlier this month. An interesting counterpoint though to this uproar is how édouard Louis, a French autofiction novelist and a peer of Gorman's, was paired three years ago with Lorin Stein, the former editor of The Paris Review. Stein translated Louis's short work, "A History of Violence" into English. The book recounts Louis's rape by a casual gay male hookup who was a person of color.

Stein however had been called out in 2017 for sexually harassing women subordinates during his editorship and was subsequently forced to resign. That same year, Louis's breakout and breakthrough work, "The End of Eddy," first appeared in English. It unflinchingly revisits his coming of age as a gay tween/teen and the brutal bullying that he endured throughout, all amidst his poor white French circumstances.

Given Stein's Ivy League, establishment pedigree, perhaps Louis's American publisher considered the choice at once a means on some level to heteronormalize the book and its author, and even make it a kind of meta-penance to attract a presumed white mass audience. Given the degree though of Louis's wokeness—his close ties to Zadie Smith and the late Toni Morrison, and particularly his refusal to participate in the prosecution of his assailant—looking back now it all seems to have transpired on another planet.

The zany world of that long ago comedy that played in New Haven was one that I have long wished I could've visited, if only for one night. By that time, the actual Garnett, whose output was not only prodigious but extraordinary for a woman born in the Victorian era, was widely discounted. Since then, her work has been revisited, lauded, and re-appreciated.

The sidewalks we make and those we choose to act as them can and should come from every possible walk of life. They can and should be clean and clear for everyone. But in choosing translators, to quote my late mother, we must always watch where we're going in order to not to trip.