translation Archives - Goddard College

By Way of the Author’s Voice

I wanted to open the valise of what could not make the trip into English. I wanted to hear Cortázar’s voice, the author speaking the language in which he wrote.

Translation is impossible, poet and translator Alastair Reid told us in a small poetry workshop at Antioch College in 1970. He said you needed to know this, and then do it anyway. He describes the risk of failure in his poem, Speaking a Foreign Language: “Easy to understand,/through the tangle of language, the heart behind/groping… Continue reading Another World in Translation