Anna Moschovakis on Translating the Imparfait Adjective

After attending a Bridge translation reading series event with Anna Moschovakis and Lydia Davis, Translationista Susan Bernofsky was inspired to delve further into the subjects covered there:

Davis spoke in detail about her revision process, which sometimes continues even after a book sees print if her editors allow her to make changes for subsequent editions, as happened with her most recent book, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. In particular, she toned down her use of "would" to render Flaubert's characteristic use of the verb form imparfait/imperfect (as in: "In the morning, she would do this, and then she would do that"); in the most recent edition, Davis uses the "would" forms only once or twice to set the context, and then shifts to the less obtrusive simple past form ("then she did that"). Davis finds - and in this I agree with her - that it's easier to experience a book when it's in print, as opposed to in manuscript form....

But it was poet Anna Moschovakis who contacted her with similar thinking. So Bernosfksy asked her to guest blog (lucky for us!). Moschovakis is also a translator, most recently of Albert Cossery's The Jokers. "Last night, I told a lie from a panel stage, and I'm here to set it right," she told Bernofsky. She continues:

I read from my translation of Albert Cossery's The Jokers, and then Lydia read from—and eloquently spoke about—her translation of Madame Bovary. At the Q&A, the first question posed to me was about Cossery's ample, exaggerated use of adjectives and adverbs, and whether I felt the need to tone it down for the English version.

I should have been expecting this question, since it is the one specifically translation-related issue brought up in reviews of Cossery's work and in James Buchan's introduction to The Jokers, in which he writes: "[Cossery's] style depends for its effect on precise and outlandish adjectives, as in the description here of the terrace of the Globe Café. That is not the very best style in English, which likes verbs and nouns, and presents a challenge to his translator."

So I should have been expecting the question, but I had nothing prepared to say.

But she does say quite a bit--and finally addresses the question of adjectives. The nuanced reflection on what changes and needs to be changed in translation is a fascinating one for those of us who aren't familiar with the process:

And that brings me back to Cossery's adjectives.

Here is the short section I picked out on the fly as an example (I've bolded the adjectives and adverbs):

"Karim gave himself up to a feeling of delicious languor, while enjoying the voluptuous vision of his mistress from the night before getting dressed in the middle of the room. From the patronizing smile that played on his lips you would have thought he was observing a procession of dancers, lasciviously swaying their hips for his pleasure alone, instead of a poor creature (picked up on the street) whose modest charms no longer held a single secret for him. Karim's languorous pose was meant to suggest an atmosphere of luxury and decadence, but in fact it hid the state of nervous tension that had been racking him since he woke up."

I suggested that I had removed four or five additional "languorous"- type adjectives from this scene, in order to bring it down to a proportionally purple prose in English. What I was trying to address, I think, was the importance for me of getting the tone right in a translation, of making it sound right. What I probably should have said was that I didn't particularly think about adjectives while I was translating—I just tried to get the translation right, nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and all. I didn't approach the challenge of translating Cossery as a challenge about adjectives, but a challenge about tone.

So when a few people came up to me after the panel to ask me how it felt to remove Cossery's own adjectives from the book, I was surprised. Had I said that? Had I done that? First of all, on the translation-theory continuum between domestication (making the original sound more English) and foreignization (bringing a sense of foreignness to the English translation), I lean heavily toward the latter position. Second of all, I really didn't remember if I'd removed a single adjective in The Jokers. I just remember that my second draft was shorter than my first; that my perspicuous editor suggested a leaner sentence on many occasions, and on many occasions I agreed; and that I struggled most of all to reproduce Cossery's nimbly ironic tone.

So this morning, l'esprit de l'escalier sent me back to the original to see if, in fact, I had removed any adjectives from that passage I quoted....

Read the full post here to discover what happened. Hint: "It's about dealing with sentences in which so much of what happens is happening in that part of speech." Here's to poet-translators!