Can you name a single translator? If you have a favorite author who writes in another language, do you know who he or she is translated by?

I’ve always been very particular about my translations. In a bookstore, I can often be seen comparing all versions available. This often requires advanced juggling skills and is sometimes a very difficult decision indeed. Translation is a extremely challenging occupation. I’ve been even more aware of the difficulties since I began seriously learning a second language. Languages are not just coded versions of each other. It’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that. So, I was quite pleased when I heard that the Man Booker people were offering a prize for translators. I was rather disappointed when I heard the details though. The new Man Booker International Prize will be offered to a living writer who has an impressive body of work that has had international impact. If they are translated, an additional £15,000 will be added to the award money and the author is left to divvy it up between his or her various translators, as the author sees fit. Sadly, if your author dies (i.e.: Saul Bellow was one of the contenders) or the authors you translate are already long dead (i.e.: Homer, Tolstoy…) this prize is not for you.

Why didn’t they just make it for a living translator? That would have been much more respectful of the job, not to mention much more interesting.

Imagine my surprise when a woman in front of me at the bookstore today went rushing to the cashier clutching a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now this in itself is not surprising: he is a fine author and heartily deserves this sort of treatment. No, what was surprising was that I didn’t recognize the title. Now, granted, I live in Paris, so everything’s in French (duh!) but I thought I knew all the French titles for his books… I rushed over to the table where I’d seen her pick it up and there it was “Mémoire de mes putains tristes” - A NEW NOVEL!!! I thought he was working on the second installment of his memoirs?!? The killer is– (wait for it!) –it comes out in English in October 2005. According to my fingers, that’s five months away…

Aaaaarg!!!

I wonder how Marquez reads in French?

(Just so you know for your to buy list, the title is “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” and it is being furiously translated–as I speak–by Edith Grossman.)

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails…and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

–Anonymous curse on book thieves from the monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain

[ the curse, in fact, was penned by Edmund Lester Pearson (1880-1937) a professional librarian ]