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Translators are the psychoanalysts of the authors

Tribute (from Wuz )

Daniel Pennac: the translator is the author psychoanalyst

This is the speech given by Daniel Pennac in occasion of the Award that was presented in the occasion of the translation of Urbino.
The translation is by Yasmina Melaouah intervention, official translator of the beloved French author.
His words make it quite clear why the jury decided to award Daniel Pennac, but the reasons for the "official" were so designated by the Commission: the inexhaustible readiness with which supports its translators in various stages of interpretation and yield of language, for the generous attention shown towards their working conditions, for the ideal witness to the value of the translation of which is a carrier in the world of culture.

Dear translators, light of my secular Pentecost, let me thank you and tell you my surprise, thank you for the honor you do me this award and assigning me tell you my surprise at having chosen me for this honor.
You say that I was grateful for my general attitude towards the translators. What gratitude? What would be the man that you are without translators? A man who does not speak law or any language besides their own, not even English, and I think also the last European to be in this plight. Even the Italian, despite three decades of friendship that bind us. This man has a vital need of translators, you are my life, my life, thanks to you my books are reborn and crossing borders. I say reborn as the translation of a literary text is equivalent to a new birth and the role played by the translators in this birth is regarded as a creation. The notion of translation is inseparable from the creation , the language does not simply transpose is an act of translation, but an act of duplication, which produces a Ostrogothic incomprehensible. Just read the instructions for using my washing machine from Germany, Italian design with Japanese electronics, manufactured in Korea to be linguistically driven to suicide.

For a novel alive in another language is necessary for someone to give him new life in this new language and that someone is you. What is the new life of a well-published novel? In a text that is embodied in a language that is not its original language, in your case Italian, enough to make the reader exclaim, "seems written in Italian, "which can not be said of the instructions for your machine. But what has proved an illusion of the reader? The mysterious form of the excellent translation, in this case the ability to transpose into another language vocabulary classical, popular foreign author, the pace of his writing, his musicality, its implications, its allusions, the different intentions, essentially what is written and what we might call the spirit of the text . Ability that the Translator is a kind of psychoanalyst author. But some say the spirit of the text also says spirit of the language in which the text is written, which makes you even care ethnologists and linguists fussy, this ability to restore the spirit of a foreign language in your language can only come from a merger with the text and the language, together a perfect mastery of the target language , yours. This dual responsibility requires ubiquity linguistic and literary or, more accurately, an analog intuition, this intuition analog requires translators to immerse themselves in a dimension of obsession, which, incidentally, is the same as the novelist work. In the exercise of this obsession, Yasmina Melaouah , my Italian translator, Eveline Passet , my German translator, Valentic Vlatka, my translator Croatian Mitsubayashi Akira, my Japanese translator, Sarah Adams , my translator for English, or Manuel Serrat Crespo , my English translator - to name but a few - I often reach into the heart of my text. But the obsession, dear friends, as I know, takes time. It takes time. And this time, it should be remunerated.

few years ago at a conference where I was asked what I thought of the fact that the translator is psychoanalyst author (since This idea is not mine, and at that conference on it were all unanimously agree), I said "yes, yes, I clapped and then I suggested to align the remuneration of translators that of psychoanalysts . Alas, the end of unanimity. Nobody agreed with me, except the translators present, very fun idea. Given that, professionally, you are slaves obsession without remuneration requires that its duration. And yet translate. Very good, in the case of many of you.
When I happen to read a foreign novel translated poorly, before blaming the translator I always wonder how long he was allowed to enter intimate with the text and in the depths of the two languages \u200b\u200binvolved . And when I happen to read a good translation, my first reaction is absolute gratitude for the translator that he found time for his obsession, which is dedicated literary utopia, despite a market logic that is concerned only when the letters become numbers, big money, and that does not distinguish between literature and instructions for use of our washing machines.

of all this, then, your ubiquity, your obsession, your commitment to ensure that each novel is inscribed in the world literature, thank you.



by Paola Pedrinazzi