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Unread 03-14-2021, 07:38 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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Location: Boston, MA
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In a word — infuriating — if the articles you've linked here are accurate.


This, from Nuria Barrios, El Pias, pretty much says it all:

"The simple truth is that [Janice] Deul [Dutch race activist via social media] is not talking about translation, she’s talking about politics. She confuses “moral right” with literary quality, ignoring the fact that imagination is what makes translation and art, in general, possible. Deul’s logic makes translators visible, when the essence of translators is to be invisible. Their voice embraces all voices. In order to be everyone, they must dissolve and be reborn; to come out of themselves in order to enter into others. Contrary to other disciplines in which the artist seeks to have a voice, a stamp, to be Someone, in translation excellence is to be Nobody. It is a matter of not being."


You needn't look far to find out that Rijneveld is eminently qualified.

"Get back to where you once belonged" as the song goes. Gorman herself approved Dutch writer Rijneveld to translate her poem. Case closed.



No wait... The El Pais article ends with this:

"We do not yet know if Deul’s logic will spread, if it will affect the other people hired to translate Amanda Gorman’s poem into their language. But we do know one thing: what has happened is no mere anecdote. It is symptomatic of a new censorship, lethal for translation, for art, for life.

There's a fire burning...



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(Editing back in... I may be taken to school on this. I hope not.)
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Last edited by Jim Moonan; 03-14-2021 at 08:24 AM.
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