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.

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Annie Janusch

José Manuel Prieto began his June Lit&Lunch reading in San Francisco by commenting on the light—namely, how the light in San Francisco reminded him of the light in St. Petersburg. This fascination with light—and the illusions it casts—comes to play a remarkable role in his novel Rex, where a diamond’s brilliance reveals nothing of its authenticity. One of Rex’s main characters is a Russian scientist, living with his wife, their son, and their son’s tutor on the Costa Brava, where he has not only managed to manufacture artificial diamonds but also to pass them off as real to Russian Mafiosi. Having heard Prieto discuss Rex on a few occasions now, I’ve noticed how animatedly he speaks about the subject of diamond forgery, and considering that Prieto studied engineering in Novosibirsk, Russia, this doesn’t come entirely as a surprise.

As Prieto went on to explain, and Esther Allen to translate, at their reading with the Center, the history of manufacturing artificial diamonds goes back a couple hundred years. Although there had been many previous attempts throughout the world, the first diamond to be successfully manufactured was in the U.S. in 1953 by General Electric (to be used for industrial purposes like cutting hard materials). Chemists and scientists have always known that diamonds are made of carbon, but a French scientist put a fine point on this once by concentrating the sun’s rays on a diamond through a magnifying glass (like a child might do to set fire to ants)—and the diamond went up in flames.

It wasn’t until 1981, though, that Japanese scientists produced the first diamond of gem quality, one that replicated the immaculate sparkle and transparency of a real diamond. By the beginning of the 1990s, artificial diamonds that were absolutely indistinguishable from natural diamonds were being manufactured—and in none other than Novosibirsk, where Prieto had studied engineering. Even expert jewelers have been unable to distinguish between real diamonds and artificial diamonds, which, as Prieto has pointed out, is disturbing to a company like De Beers, which buys the entire annual production of diamonds in Russia.

Although Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is an evident motif in Rex, Prieto also makes a deliberate nod to Proust’s novella The Lemoine Affair, which just came out last year in English translation by Charlotte Mandell from Melville House. In The Lemoine Affair, a man approaches De Beers, claiming he knows how to manufacture artificial diamonds and threatens to flood the marketplace and destroy DeBeers’ monopoly. Proust’s own family owned shares in DeBeers and lost money in this famous swindle. As Prieto ironically pointed out, Proust was able to write his great novels in part because of the wealth afforded his family by diamonds.

Prieto, too, has cited inspiration from Jules Verne’s 1852 novel The Star of the South, about the discovery of diamonds in Kimberly, South Africa.

As Prieto advised the audience in San Francisco, if you’re in the market for a precious stone, don’t waste your money; buy the fake diamond.

Annie Janusch manages the Center’s TWO LINES World Writing in Translation series, the latest volume of which, Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed, features extracts from Rex.