My translations of three short stories by the Israeli author Reuven Miran are now on line. I'm very proud to be part of Zeek's commitment to promoting Modern Hebrew writing through translation. Miran's texts, which were more like prose poems, were such a pleasure to work with. From my Translator's Note:
The idea, expressed in the story "Meteor," that a meteor is only fully perceived at the moment of its death – when it bursts into flames through the Earth's atmosphere – could apply to the work of translation. The meaning and spirit of a text are most vulnerable when the original and target language come into contact, but this instant also offers a tremendous opportunity for understanding the text in new and productive ways.
Translation is often spoken of in terms of metaphor and simile, and often personified. Translations are traitors, assassins, les belles infidèles. (For more on this topic, I recommend Lori Chamberlain's "Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation" [reprinted in Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader, 2000, 2004].) While thinking about the process of translating Miran's stories, I found myself reaching for analogies, all of them unsuitable, until I realized that the metaphor I needed was in the very story I had translated. "...if it had not fallen through space and – thanks to that unavoidable friction – burned against the atmosphere, the meteor would have continued to spin through endless space for tens of thousands of years more, perhaps even forever" ("Meteor").
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