{"id":272686,"date":"2009-07-24T13:16:40","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T13:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/07\/24\/michiel-heyns-on-translation-creativity-and-re-creating\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:19:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:19:44","slug":"michiel-heyns-on-translation-creativity-and-re-creating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/07\/24\/michiel-heyns-on-translation-creativity-and-re-creating\/","title":{"rendered":"Michiel Heyns on Translation, Creativity, and "Re-creating""},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at the Tin House blog<\/a> (which is relatively new and very solid), South African author Michiel Heyns has an interesting essay about creativity and translation:<\/p>\n

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I have just sent off the first draft of a translation of a 130,000-word novel, Etienne van Heerden\u2019s 30 Nagte in Amsterdam (30 Nights in Amsterdam). By chance, on the same day, I receive a Call for Papers from the University of Swansea in the UK for a conference on \u201cThe Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition.\u201d The call for papers kicks off with the following paragraph:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The recent \u2018creative turn\u2019 in translation studies has challenged notions of translation as a derivative and uncreative activity which is inferior to \u2018original\u2019 writing. Commentators have drawn attention to the creative processes involved in the translation of texts, and suggested a rethinking of translation as a form of creative writing. Hence there is growing critical and theoretical interest in translations undertaken by literary authors.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The topic interests me, because I have published four novels and three literary translations (not counting this latest, as yet unpublished one), and I have from time to time asked myself, in an informal sort of way, about \u201cthe creative processes involved in the translation of texts\u201d: is it in fact \u201ca form of creative writing\u201d? And if so, how does it differ from the more traditional kind?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Writing this, it occurs to me that the word \u201crecreate\u201d encapsulates the problem: for if it means simply rendering the work in another language, then it\u2019s more a question of transliteration or transposition than creation; but if it means \u201cre-create\u201d as in creating anew, then one is stressing the creative contribution of the translator: the translation, then, carries the stamp of the translator as unmistakably as the original carries the stamp of the author.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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But of course translation is also, inescapably, a second-order activity, derived very directly from the creation of the author. If the translation is a creative act, it is yet unlike the writing of a novel in that it does not require that most difficult of creative feats, which is to create from nothing. A novelist creates and peoples a world; a translator reports back on that world to people who wouldn\u2019t otherwise have access to that world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I like his take on this (although the bit about author’s craving a “faithful rendering” when their books are translated feels a bit reductive), and his novel, The Children’s Day<\/em><\/a> looks really interesting as well. <\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at the Tin House blog (which is relatively new and very solid), South African author Michiel Heyns has an interesting essay about creativity and translation: I have just sent off the first draft of a translation of a 130,000-word novel, Etienne van Heerden\u2019s 30 Nagte in Amsterdam (30 Nights in Amsterdam). By chance, on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[1836,24196,26046,26056],"class_list":["post-272686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-cwp","tag-michiel-heyns","tag-the-childrens-day","tag-tin-house"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351776,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272686\/revisions\/351776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}