{"id":821,"date":"2012-03-26T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T04:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=821"},"modified":"2012-03-26T12:52:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T04:52:00","slug":"b-j-epstein-on-reading-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=821","title":{"rendered":"B. J. Epstein on Reading Translations"},"content":{"rendered":"

My old friend B. J. Epstein<\/a> (we co-edited our school’s literary journal back in high school) is a translator from Swedish and Norwegian (interestingly, not only did we both end up as translators, we both translate from languages not taught in our high school when we were there), and a blogger for HuffingtonPost UK<\/a>. Her most recent piece<\/a> is on how to read translations. Here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

If we consider how we read – just compare how you read the newspaper to how you would read a textbook, or how you read a novel when you were a teenager to how you do so 15 years later – it becomes clear that we do read different texts in different ways, with different aims guiding our reading, at different points in our lives and in different contexts. This suggests, then, that reading a translation will be a different project from reading a non-translated piece of writing, and also that there are multiple ways of reading a translation, just as there are multiple ways of reading any text.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My old friend B. J. Epstein (we co-edited our school’s literary journal back in high school) is a translator from Swedish and Norwegian (interestingly, not only did we both end up as translators, we both translate from languages not taught … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[460],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-df","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1286,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1286","url_meta":{"origin":821,"position":0},"title":"More Views on Mo Yan","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"New Nobel Prize-winner for Literature Mo Yan \u83ab\u8a00 has, for obvious reasons, become a hot topic of discussion. I've assembled some of the analysis that's recently appeared online in various forms. First, my highschool classmate & translator from Swedish B J Epstein has written about the Nobel from an outsider's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/2-1-DCfPwqs\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4508,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4508","url_meta":{"origin":821,"position":1},"title":"Daniel Tay on The Reciprocal Translation Project","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 27, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Daniel Tay has written a review of The Reciprocal Translation Project, edited by James Sherry and Sun Dong \u5b59\u51ac, which gives a different take from Eleanor Goodman's (\"There is no acknowledgement of the structure, form, tone, emotional texture, repetition, surprise, rhythm, rhyme, sound effect, level of diction, intent, etc., etc.,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3498,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3498","url_meta":{"origin":821,"position":2},"title":"Eberlein on Han Dong in English","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Xujun Eberlein in LARB looks at Han Dong \u97e9\u4e1c in English and asks, \"Is There a Good Way to Translate Chinese Poetry?\" Her answer is clearly yes. She asks, \"why would I want to read a translation that has departed from the original? Wouldn\u2019t I be better off reading original\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lareviewofbooks-org.scdn3.secure.raxcdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/handong-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3569,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3569","url_meta":{"origin":821,"position":3},"title":"Mazanec on Rouzer’s Hanshan Translations","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Tom Mazanec has posted about Paul Rouzer's new translation of Hanshan \u5bd2\u5c71 (Cold Mountain) for de Gruyter's Library of Chinese Humanities--now available for sale and free download. As Tom notes, some of the Hanshan corpus was \"famously translated by Gary Snyder in 1958 [and] later celebrated by Jack Kerouac in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.degruyter.com\/doc\/cover\/9781501501913.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4428,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4428","url_meta":{"origin":821,"position":4},"title":"Turner on Poets of the Late Tang Dynasty","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 18, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Matt Turner reviews The Collected Poems of Li He \u674e\u8cc0, translated by J.D. Frodsham, and Li Shangyin \u674e\u5546\u96b1, edited by Chloe Garcia Roberts with translations by Roberts, Lucas Klein, and A.C. Graham, for Music & Literature. 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