Page:Performing Without a Stage - The Art of Literary Translation - by Robert Wechsler.pdf/23

 some departments and institutions are starting to recognize translations in their tenure considerations.

Now that I’ve responded to the question, Where do translators come from? it’s time to ask the question, What does it take to become one? I’d like to answer this question in my usual indirect way, by answering another question: Why is it more difficult to be a good young translator than it is to be a good young writer?

Of course, a young writer only needs to know one language. But even more important, a young writer only needs to know enough about life to write about what he wants to write about. If he follows his teachers’ advice and writes what he knows (or feels or dreams), then it is axiomatic that there will be nothing lacking in terms of his knowledge and experiences. When he describes the way a hockey player attacks a puck — or another player — he is most likely a knowledgeable hockey player or fan, or he’d have his hero play another sport. A young translator, however, has to write about things and experiences he knows nothing about. He might never have attended a hockey game and might not know the language of the sport, not to mention of the fans, even in his own language. A dictionary can’t help him with this. This is also true of the young translator’s experience of his literary culture and of the foreign writer’s literary culture, history, et al. The older a curious person gets (and translators tend to be exceptionally curious people), the more he comes to know about more things. And the more life and literary experiences he accumulates.

A young translator also has limited experience with English. He hasn’t read as much, hasn’t written as much, hasn’t talked to as many people, and is therefore not aware of as many of the possibilities of the English language, of as many different ways of saying something. Life experience may be the writer’s principal resource, but language is the writer’s medium, and a lack of knowledge of English is more sure to lead to bad writing than a lack of life experience. Even with limited knowledge of the possibilities of English, a young writer can find a way to express his vision or experiences; he can write within himself, within his limitations. A translator does not have this luxury. He cannot write within himself; he has to write within somebody else. He has to find