As I have been reading a lot of French and Latin American literature recently the issue of translations has been coming up, namely that it's often hard to know which translation of a foreign book to go for, and if you choose the wrong one you might be turned off from an author. In light of this, the Translators Association of the Society of Authors is celebrating their fiftieth year by compiling a list of the fifty best translation in the last fifty years. [via] While there are certainly some highlights on the list, some I've read and others I've been meaning to, I was disappointed to not find one of my favorite translators on the list, Stephen Mitchell, whose translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's works are some of the most breathtaking I have ever read. Equally masterful is Coleman Barks' translation of the spiritual poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi.
Sometimes as an American it is easy to forget the difficulties that come in trying to get one's work read internationally. Beyond the barriers of communication there are also the challenges of time and space: dying before one's work is published, loosing it on a train... Here's a great article on forgotten and lost masterpieces that certainly got me drooling to think that one day someone might discover in a Polish attic Bruno Schulz's missing novel, The Messiah.
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