Posted on January 22, 2010 by Scott Esposito

Following up on the recent MLA focusing on translation, The Chronicle of Higher Education has a look at the prospects of making it as a translator these days in higher ed:

Translation is having a moment, or a series of moments. But its champions say the fight is far from over to have translation—not the theory of it but the hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves, get-out-your-lexicons variety—recognized as a legitimate scholarly activity. In the United States, it’s nearly impossible to make a living as an independent literary translator. It’s almost as hard to get an academic job as one.

The article quotes several translators who have worked on the Center’s publications–among them, Lawrence Venuti and Esther Allen. The later has an interesting remark on what translating does to a candidate’s tenure chances:

Just as publishers have had an unfortunate tendency not to bother putting translators’ names on book jackets—the idea being that translations are harder to sell—so hiring and tenure-and-promotion committees have preferred not to hear about the translation activities of the candidates whose dossiers they review. It’s almost as though translation is a bad habit, like gambling, that candidates should conceal rather than advertise.

“It actively works against you, which is amazing if you consider that for 3,000 years translation has been at the heart of literary scholarship,” says Esther Allen, an assistant professor in the department of modern languages and comparative literature at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

You can hear more of Allen’s thoughts on translation by listening to the audio of our Lit&Lunch event featuring her and Cuban novelist Jose Manuel Prieto.