{"id":419022,"date":"2019-04-19T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=419022"},"modified":"2019-04-18T15:03:28","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:03:28","slug":"the-man-between-genre-of-the-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2019\/04\/19\/the-man-between-genre-of-the-month\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man Between [Genre of the Month]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been\u00a0<em>very lax\u00a0<\/em>in writing about the Open Letter author\/genre of the month for April: nonfiction. But, there are still a couple of weeks left to share some info about our previously published and forthcoming works of nonfiction.<\/p>\n<p>And, as always, you can get <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openletterbooks.org\/collections\/nonfiction\">30% any of these books<\/a> by using NONFICTION at checkout.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RfCiTD4ShLA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I just got done talking with the legendary Howard Goldblatt as part of my &#8220;World Lit &amp; Translation&#8221; class and he brought up the video above that Michael Henry Heim made on &#8220;Role of Motivation in Learning Languages.&#8221; In this 6 minute video he talks about four of the ten (yes, you read that right) languages that he spoke. And in French, German, Spanish, and Russian, he explains his motivation for learning that particular language.<\/p>\n<p>I miss Mike so much. He was absolutely one of a kind. And so down to earth. So unassuming. He&#8217;s one of those people who you\u00a0<em>know<\/em>, <em>instantly\u00a0<\/em>is a verifiable genius, and yet, he made you feel completely on the level, worth talking to, worth listening to. He treated everyone with such respect and in ways that were so\u00a0<em>encouraging<\/em>. I could go on and on, but I don&#8217;t have time to cry right now.<\/p>\n<p>Mike&#8217;s impact on the world was incredible. His impact on the world of translation is beyond description. In sports\u2014especially Tackle Ball\u2014there&#8217;s often talk of a &#8220;coaching tree.&#8221; This head coach inspired these assistants who became head coaches who trained these assistants, on and on for ages.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Mike&#8217;s &#8220;translation tree&#8221; is more like a translation forest. It&#8217;s virtually impossible to find anyone connected to the world of international lit during the time that he was alive who\u00a0<em>doesn&#8217;t\u00a0<\/em>have an anecdote or a story or something. Virtually impossible.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m not even counting the dozens of translators who have receive PEN\/Heim Translation Fund awards.<\/p>\n<p>He was\/is\/will forever be a legend.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-419062\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/man-betwee.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"220\" height=\"340\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Which is all a prelude to saying that\u00a0<em>The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim &amp; A Life in Translation\u00a0<\/em>is one of the nonfiction titles we&#8217;ve published that you absolutely must own if you&#8217;re at all interested in words. Or books. Translation. Being inspired. Amazing people. Trust me\u2014this is a book that you&#8217;ll definitely love.<\/p>\n<p>The book is made up of three sections: &#8220;The Man,&#8221; which includes a long interview with MHH and his complete bibliography (over 60 publications), and his essay on &#8220;The Three Eras of Modern Translation&#8221; (excerpted below); &#8220;Community,&#8221; with pieces from Dubravka Ugreic, Andrei Codrescu, Rosanna Warren, and more about Mike as a person; and &#8220;Impact,&#8221; a collection of essays from people like Russell Scott Valentino (&#8220;New Frontiers for Translation in the Twenty-First Century: The Globe, The Market, The Field&#8221;), Sean Cotter (&#8220;The Un-X-able Y-ness of Z-ing (Q): A List with Notes&#8221;), Breon Mitchell (&#8220;The Lives of Translators&#8221;), and Esther Allen (&#8220;Michael Henry Heim: A Theory&#8221;), among others.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, this book is\u00a0<em>perfect\u00a0<\/em>for teaching. Get <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openletterbooks.org\/products\/the-man-between-michael-henry-heim-a-life-in-translation\">30% off now<\/a> (NONFICTION at checkout) and then use it for the next decade, inspiring hundreds of students along the way.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a taste. From Michael Henry Heim&#8217;s &#8220;The Three Eras of Modern Translation,&#8221; a talk he gave at the Center for the Art of Translation. (Side-note: If you want to know more about the Salzburg conference he referenced, just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/tag\/salzburg-global-seminars\/\">click here<\/a>. I wrote a <em>lot <\/em>about that magical week.)<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\">I\u2019m terribly proud to be here because this is such a wonderful occasion. I first heard about this fantastic organization two years ago when I met Olivia [Sears, founder of the Center for the Art of Translation]in Salzburg, Austria. She is a powerhouse, as you all know. I\u2019m so glad that things are working well here and you are moving forward in these times when nothing seems to be moving forward, everything seems to be moving back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">What I wanted to do, rather than give a reading, was to talk about the translator\u2019s new visibility, from reactive to active to proactive. I\u2019m going to try to be positive. We\u2019re moving in a vector toward something that I think does exist, and we want to keep it existing. The ears of many of you will prick up when you hear that word \u201cvisibility,\u201d if you\u2019ve read Lawrence Venuti\u2019s <em>The Translator\u2019s Invisibility<\/em>, which came out in 1995.It was a revisionist history of translation. Instead of going through all kinds of technical innovations, he tried to show why translation has been swept under the carpet, basically. What I thought I would do here is talk about what I have seen translation <em>do<\/em> in the years I have been involved in it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I start with the Cold War because that\u2019s when I began thinking about translation. That is what I call the reactive period, in which basically\u2014I\u2019m exaggerating, of course\u2014but basically a work was translated because there was an event that took place, and the work was either part of the event itself or was reacting to the event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Let me give you two examples. First is <em>Doctor Zhivago<\/em>, by Boris Pasternak, which came out in 1958,<span class=\"s1\">3 <\/span>and it was a sensation\u2014twenty-six weeks on the <em>New York Times<\/em> best-seller list. I won\u2019t go into the personal story, but I did meet Max Hayward, the book\u2019s British translator, and he told me exactly how he was forced to work when he was translating that novel, which was a sensation because it was the first time a work had been exported, smuggled out of the Soviet Union, and by Isaiah Berlin, of all people. All of a sudden this novel was front-page news. It was extremely important for the translation to come out as fast as it possibly could because the publishers wanted to cash in on the publicity. Apparently what they did was lock Max Hayward in a hotel room with his collaborator, and they wouldn\u2019t let them out. Literally, they would not let them out until the entire translation was done. That\u2019s how important it was. But that certainly is reactive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">A few years later a similar work came out of the Soviet Union. This one <em>was<\/em> actually published officially, but it was published only once and then disappeared: Solzhenitsyn\u2019s <em>One Day in the Life of <\/em><em>Ivan Denisovich<\/em>, a work that mentioned the labor camps for the first time. Until that point, nobody was allowed to mention the fact that these camps existed. Millions of people who had been affected by the camps saw their lives justified for the first time because of this book. It was a big sensation and it was published as fast as it could be published in all the languages of the world, and in English\u2014three times in three different translations. This is 1963. And, yes, best-seller lists again, but this time it\u2019s even more interesting because there were three translations, which meant the reviewers <em>did<\/em> have to deal with the translation. So all of a sudden we\u2019re getting a little bit closer to the next category that I\u2019m talking about\u2014the active period. All of a sudden, people began having to read about translation in the daily press, and that made a big difference. Three translations came out at the time and later two more came out, so it was an ongoing kind of thing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Now let\u2019s move on to the active period. Once again we\u2019re still political, but now semi-political. This next category I want to talk about is also connected with the Cold War, but the Cold War is now at a different stage. In 1974, Philip Roth inaugurated a series with Penguin Books called \u201cWriters from the Other Europe.\u201d He edited it and he gave his name to it; he gave his cachet to it. I laughed and said that his name was bigger than the author\u2019s name on each book. But maybe that wasn\u2019t so bad because people trusted his name, and that would make them trust a name they couldn\u2019t pronounce, these foreign names, Central European names, like Kundera and Schulz, Tadeusz Borowski, and Danilo Ki\u0161, and so on. These works introduced a whole new kind of mentality to the West, and Roth\u2019s name made them perfectly acceptable. This went on from 1974 to\u2014well, you can imagine what year: 1989. After that things moved into a different vein and we\u2019ll be talking about that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">But first I wanted to move onto the next phase of this period; now we\u2019re getting a little bit closer to <em>proactive<\/em>. There was a movement away from political reasons to be translating, and that was the Latin American Boom, which took place at more or less the same time, except that it wasn\u2019t political. Or rather, I\u2019m sure it was very political for the Latin Americans, but we didn\u2019t view it that way. We viewed it simply as fine literature. Not only that, but we started to have what I would call, though I hate to use the word, \u201csuperstar\u201d translators. You had writers from various countries, and that was important, too, not just one country, but various countries: Cort\u00e1zar from Argentina, Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez from Colombia, Fuentes from Mexico, Vargas Llosa from Peru. And enter star translator Gregory Rabassa. He translated most of these authors, not all of each one, of course. And he also made a kind of headline news. Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez made a very big push in his favor, saying that Rabassa\u2019s translation was better than the original. And what does that mean? You can interpret it however you like. On the other hand, it did bring visibility to the translator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">I\u2019d like to include in this active category something that is, let\u2019s say, an anomaly, something completely <em>sui generis<\/em>, and that is a single author who became a worldwide best-seller: Umberto Eco. And he also had his Rabassa, who was William Weaver. His <em>Name of the <\/em><em>Rose<\/em> was an absolute sensation. It came out in Italian in 1980 and was translated in 1983.<span class=\"s1\">5 <\/span>Notice that there is a gap there, but it finally did come out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">There\u2019s a wonderful writer\u2014I\u2019ve translated several of her novels\u2014a very literary, clever, <em>brilliant<\/em> Croatian writer named Dubravka Ugre\u0161i\u0107, and she once said that when she went to the nude beaches on the Dalmatian coast she could always tell the nationality of every person, even though they didn\u2019t have a stitch of clothes on, because she could see what translation they were reading <em>The Name of the <\/em><em>Rose<\/em> in. It was really something.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At about that time, or maybe a little later than that, I was asked to be on an Australian cultural program called <em>Friday Night Live<\/em>\u2014I don\u2019t know if they were playing on <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em> or if the title had anything to do with that. I had to stay up until three o\u2019clock in the morning to talk to the presenter, who was interviewing me in Los Angeles and Weaver in Italy, where he was living. The interviewer asked me where I was sitting, and I said in my kitchen. Then he asked Weaver where he was, and he said, \u201cIn the echo chamber.\u201d And what was the \u201cecho chamber\u201d? The Eco Chamber was the building he had built, a separate building, from the profits he had made basically from that one book (though of course he translated many other books as well). That\u2019s how important that phenomenon was at the time. [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Want to read the rest? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openletterbooks.org\/products\/the-man-between-michael-henry-heim-a-life-in-translation\">Use NONFICTION for 30% off<\/a>. (Or buy it from your favorite bookseller.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been\u00a0very lax\u00a0in writing about the Open Letter author\/genre of the month for April: nonfiction. But, there are still a couple of weeks left to share some info about our previously published and forthcoming works of nonfiction. And, as always, you can get 30% any of these books by using NONFICTION at checkout. I just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":419062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[68532,6196,42656],"class_list":["post-419022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-a-man-between","tag-michael-henry-heim","tag-nonfiction-in-translation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419022","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=419022"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419082,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419022\/revisions\/419082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}