Firmare
An open letter from the heirs to those who helped bring you the Bible, Lao Tzu, Dostoyevsky, Aristotle, Mishima, Flaubert, Homer, Borges, Goethe, Proust, Rilke, Camus, Voltaire, Pushkin…
The problem of translating is actually the very same as that of writing, and the translator is at the heart of it perhaps even more so than the author. He is asked … to master not just a language, but everything that lies behind it, that is to say, an entire culture, an entire world, an entire way of viewing the world…
He is asked to pull off this arduous yet impassioned effort without calling attention to himself… He is asked to consider the fact that the reader isn’t even aware of him his greatest triumph … an ascetic, an essentially selfless hero, ready to give his all in exchange for very little and to disappear into the twilight, anonymous and sublime, when the epic deed is accomplished. The translator is literature’s last, true knight errant.
– (Fruttero&Lucentini, I ferri del mestiere (Tools of the Trade), Einaudi, Torino 2003)
(Thanks to the Merm and to Mark (who else?) for pointing as well to this bleak reminder of the status quo.)
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