perdido na trad-ção
« at best, knee-jerk »
…e aos que nos acusam de demasiado materialistas no depender o valor do livro de BD ao peso, tamanho, número de páginas, gramagem destas, indiferentes ao esforço do artista, à obra feita, importância conseguida: o nosso rebuttal. Sim. Neste século não há mais razões que prendam o artista ao papel, a mesma obra pode ser divulgada por outros canais, muito mais abrangentes, económicos, acessíveis, imediatos, partilháveis, yadda y-y. A opção de publicar em livro é uma escolha material, duplo sentido: suporte e guito. Do primeiro os académicos teorizam a natureza do meio, do segundo as editoras dão-lhe prática. (*) Com esses interesses atrás não esperamos mudanças a vir de dentro, virão como sempre da realidade que se impõe à qual a indústria quererá prover e academia explicar.
A equiparação comics a comic books já não é tão pacífica como antes embora persista como default de uma evidência que todos reconhecem estar ultrapassada, e este não é o único blindspot que escolhemos ignorar em relação à banda desenhada. Injustiçados pelas escalas inferiores do panteão das artes a que relegam os comics conseguimos dentro deles replicar as mesmas hierarquias de valores e eleger arte sobre arte e arte em detrimento de arte, priorizar o verdadeiro artista sobre o mero artesão. Para uns conta apenas o argumento, os que desenham as histórias são secundários e a rotatividade desses prova-os. Outros seguem a “arte”, automaticamente associando-a ao boneco, o texto é complementar ao festim visual. Os mais informados exclamam que não: também reconhecem a importância do colorista e do letrista. Kudos to all, mas aqui chegados à nossa instalação de hoje do shit happens para pontes a outros diálogos, edição "e a tradução, senhores?"
By all means compliment the author on the tightness of the plotting, on the deftness of the characterization, and ignore me — they’re supported by my work, of course, but marginally. But a reviewer who thinks he can praise the rhythm, the texture, the beauty of the prose, the warmth and wit of the voice, without acknowledging who’s responsible… that’s a reviewer who simply has no understanding of what translation is. There’s a reason the copyright in my translations belongs to me and not the original author. The plot and the ideas and the themes aren’t mine, but the words are, all of them, and the way they all fit together, too.
Daniel Hahn citado pelo Edward Gauvin in "'Year Abroad. Dumb Luck. Decent Taste.': An Interview With Edward Gauvin" 12 fev 2020
Da invisibilidade tradicional e da necessidade de reexaminar o que julgamos (pun intented!) saber:
If translators are already traditionally invisible in prose fields, how much more so are they in a medium where art has the upper hand? We translators are fairly resigned to the fact that readers who goes the extra mile of bothering with a foreign book will still tend to overlook our names, even when featured more prominently than in 10-point font on the copyright page. Readers don’t usually think of translators as the ones they’re communing with; in fact, the thought of any such mediating presence may still, sadly, be rebarbative. That this attitude is so widespread as to be unthinking doesn’t mean it couldn’t bear examination, or use some adjusting going forward. Getting people to own up here doesn’t mean I think people aren’t aware of this; I think they all are, they just would rather not think about it. And it is precisely this aversion to awareness, this reluctance to consider it that then informs the sheer virulence and vituperation that have been the dominant tone of translation criticism — be they critics or academics, who from the blind of expertise take potshots at word choice with no discussion of the gestalt, as if meaning were fixed, for "not getting" an author, as if one reading might be anointed with invariant truth-value when all readings are contingent and likely instrumental.
in "'Year Abroad. Dumb Luck. Decent Taste.': An Interview With Edward Gauvin" 12 fev 2020
Longa (*) Looonga! o reader mete-a em mais de 60 minutos de leitura, e grátis ainda por cima…! entrevista a Edward Gauvin no TCJ, cobrindo os mais diversos tópicos que vão interessar académicos e businessman alike, desde conceptualizações filosóficas da arte da tradução aos inner workings do copyright e direitos de edição + digital, a um rol imenso de editoras e autores e obras no pipeline a atravessar fronteiras de línguas nas próximas temporadas... E do qual enxertámos as partes que vos queremos distorcer para outras lógicas. Primeira:
I think it’s clear to any cultural observer that the reputations of comics, genre writing, and translation are all undergoing re-evaluation if not outright renaissance in both the public and academic spheres to the extent that it’s hard to say which of these—popular or scholarly—is the driving force.
in "'Year Abroad. Dumb Luck. Decent Taste.': An Interview With Edward Gauvin" 12 fev 2020
Mantenham essa em standby. Segunda:
I also think of myself as being on the tail end of a generation that, like ones before it, stumbled, not unhappily, into the field. Whereas many today, girded with specialized degrees, or else graduates of creative writing programs set out to become translators, with mission and devotion. This has to do, I think, with the general, gradual rise in visibility for translators—it’s rare to want to grow up and become something there are no role models for.
in "'Year Abroad. Dumb Luck. Decent Taste.': An Interview With Edward Gauvin" 12 fev 2020
Hold it também. Terceira:
[Q] - What’s the process of translating a book?
[A] - Process is so particular to each work—like almost everything about translation, it’s case-by-case. As a discipline, translation is all exceptions and no rules—no rules that matter, that is, beyond a certain basic point, and even those rules are really just conventions, and so subject to change over time. "Case-by-case", however true, is a cop-out, or at best knee-jerk; I too yearn for some principle, however limited. [...] If I had to come up with a long, clunky, and still inaccurate definition à la McCloud’s "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence" it might be a thought experiment along the lines of "rewriting each sentence to preserve meaning after shifting several of its pivotal words to other parts of speech." But that purely linguistic level is just for starters, covers at best half the kinds of utterances you’ll encounter, and elides the cultural component, not to mention the gestalt of a given work, the holistic "spirit" that superior translations are said to grok.
in "'Year Abroad. Dumb Luck. Decent Taste.': An Interview With Edward Gauvin" 12 fev 2020
Dessas três ideias, na próxima.
