A few months ago (November 19, 2015), on the occasion of his review in the NYRB of the new translations of the collected works of Primo Levi, I took exception to Tim Parks’ failure to address the quality of the translations. I am happy to report that he has now done just that, quite comprehensively and insightfully, in three posts to the online version of the NYRB, the most recent of which is at http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/03/15/translation-paradox-quality-vs-celebrity/. I doubt that Parks chose to write theses critical essays in response to my comments, but I am grateful, as I imagine most translators are, for his having done so.

Parks also uses his posts on the Levi translations to offer some valuable observations on literary translation in general and the treatment reserved to translators by book reviewers and the literary marketplace. One of his comments, however, strikes me as oddly off the mark. Parks notes that some translators’ organizations argue that translators should be paid a royalty and share in the commercial success of the book “as if the translator had the same impact on the work as the author. This is nonsense.” Well, no, what’s nonsense is this clumsy mischaracterization of the argument for translators’ royalties.

True, no translator should, and no doubt ever would claim to have had the same impact on the work as the author. It is undeniable, however, that the translator is the author – “one that originates or gives existence to” – of the translation. It is the translator’s authorship that gives rise to the claim for royalties as, of course, is true for the author himself. The claim to royalties, by author or translator, is based not on the their contribution to the commercial success of the work, which only determines the amount of the royalty, but on their ownership of the property, irrespective of whether the property is the original work or the translation.
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So translators have every right to negotiate for a royalty. Where the negotiation gets touchy, naturally, is when it comes times to decide if the translator’s royalty will be paid from the publisher’s receipts or deducted from the author’s royalty. One can understand why novelists might object to giving up part of their reward for the commercial success of their novels, but one would expect novelists who are also translators to know better.
 
 
 
 
 

​This past thanksgiving weekend brought me two things to be thankful for: 1) a brief visit from my older brother; 2) watching, at his urging, the wonderful 2008 documentary by Denny Tedesco, “The Wrecking Crew” http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com/.
The title refers to a number (25-30) of studio musicians in 1960s Los Angeles, including Tedesco’s guitarist father Tommy, who played on hits for the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Jan & Dean, The Association, Mamas and Papas, Tijuana Brass, Ricky Nelson, Johnny Rivers, among others, and were the creators of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.
What particularly appealed to me was the musicians’ attitude toward their work. They inspired some further reflections on translators and their relationships with authors, publishers, and reviewers (see post 19/11/2015).

 The wrecking crew regarded themselves as much more than skilled executors of the music entrusted to them by songwriters. On the contrary, they were self-conscious interpreters of the music, who regularly modified what they were given, enriching it with their own contributions of guitar riffs, drum rolls, bass lines, and sax solos, suggested to them by the original music or by their own experience or intuition. One example of many: Carol Kaye’s bass line that she invented to open and sustain Sony and Cher’s hit “The Beat Goes On” – du du du dadu du dadu du. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI09eh020hE)

The songs came into the studio sessions as the writer had imagined them, and they came out of it with the same overall form, structure, and thematic motifs, but with a sound that was much richer and more finely honed because of the interpretations of the musicians. Is it too much to claim that this process resembles what happens in literary translation? I don’t think so, and if that is the case then it is not too much to ask of reviewers of translated works that they pay some attention to the translator’s contribution to the new version of the original composition, whether that contribution is enriching or not. 

There’s more to the movie for translators too. The wrecking crew musicians were well paid – Kaye comments that there were years when she made more money than the President. Even writers and producers with low budgets recognized the musicians’ right to fair compensation. Herb Alpert, for example, who couldn’t afford to pay union scale to the session musicians for “The Lonely Bull,” later owned up, paid the fines, and reimbursed the musicians when the song became a hit. On the down side, the musicians were not recognized on album covers or credits even when their recordings won gold records (drummer Hal Blain collected 107 of them) and in their interviews for the film they have no qualms about expressing their disappointment over the lack of recognition, for which the film offers only partial compensation.
 
​So translators have a lot to learn from the wrecking crew musicians about how to approach our own craft, esthetically and professionally. For starters, the musicians know that insisting on fair pay and artistic recognition are nothing to be ashamed of. The obverse is also true: choices to accept low pay, to relinquish copyright, or to keep a stiff upper lip rather than complain about a reviewer’s inattention, though perhaps justifiable, are nothing to be proud of. Du du du dadu du dadu du. . . .

​This morning the nice young woman who delivers our mail brought the latest issue (Nov. 8-18, 2015) of the The New York Review of Books. It’s always a treat when it arrives and I was especially delighted to see in the table of contents that this issue has a review by Tim Parks of the newly translated complete works of Primo Levi (Liveright, 3 vols. 2,910 pages).
Literary translators, especially those who translate from Italian to English, have been anxiously awaiting publication of this massive work. Not only because Levi is one of the important Italian writers of the 20th century, but even more so because these are new translations by the finest and best-known Italian-English translators working today: including Ann Goldstein, Anne Milano Appel, Antony Shugaar, Jonathan Galassi, and Michael Moore. All the big names, except perhaps Parks himself.
It was quite a surprise, therefore, to read the entire 3-page review and find not one mention of the translators or their translations. Now, anyone who has read Primo Levi in English knows that all, or virtually all, of his works have been translated before, and that they have been well received by Anglophone readers and critics, and admired by Levi’s fellow writers, such as Philip Roth. The news here is not Levi’s works or his status as a writer but the huge commitment of the publisher, Liveright and funding sources, like the National Endowments, to finance this project, not to mention the translators themselves who have translated nearly 3,000 pages of Levi’s prose and poetry.
The NYRB’s decision to review the new translations and its decision to assign the review to Parks – translator of Calvino and Leopardi among others - was a golden opportunity to compare the new translations to the old ones, to explain to readers why they should or shouldn’t bother to read Levi (again or for the first time) in these new translations, to bring a large and influential readership into a discussion about literature in translation. Alas, it is an opportunity that Parks decided to ignore. Why so? I have no idea, but I can’t let it pass without voicing my displeasure at the disservice he and the NYRB have done to Levi’s translators, old and new, to Liveright, and to literary translation in general. After reading the review, it seems fair to say that Parks has indeed read Primo Levi, but we have no way of knowing if he has read the new translations. Let’s hope that other reviewers and other literary reviews do better.

 

Yesterday, 14 December 2014, a good friend with a lot of experience in Italy, wrote about an article he’d read by Roger cohen in the N.Y. Times:

 

“Pretty favorable piece in today's NY Times. Does he have it right?”

The short answer is “No.”

Here is the link

http://nyti.ms/1zNJi97

 

For those who don’t have time to read the article, here is the what I think is the key paragraph about Italy’s young (39) premier, Matteo Renzi:

“He is a man in a hurry: constitutional reform, electoral reform, sales on eBay of a fleet of official luxury cars, women thrust into top jobs (half the cabinet is female), plans to slash the number of members of Parliament and senators (currently almost 1,000 of them).”

The key paragraph because it shows what Renzi’s good at and what journalists now almost exclusively pay attention to: what they like to call “optics”. The constitutional reform proposed by Renzi is still stalled in parliament a year later and it cannot pass without the votes of Silvio Berlusconi’s moribund Forza Italia, which means that it’s not much of a reform at all. Yes, the number of Senators would be reduced but they won’t be elected by the people but by the regional legislatures, taking Italy back to the situation in the U.S. prior to the 17th amendment (1913).

Similarly, the electoral reform is stuck despite Renzi’s promise to have it approved by March 31, and it also guarantees control of the parliament by the party machines – the candidates are chosen by the party secretariats and voters have no choice to vote the candidate of their choice. If you vote for Renzi’s party you vote for candidates selected by Renzi and who are thus beholden to Renzi – or any party secretary – rather than to their constituents. Hmm.

The sale of “official luxury cars” resulted in the sale of 8-10 cars and netted several hundred thousand euros for the state treasury. The optics were great but the substance is invisible.

Perhaps the best example of empty optics has been Renzi’s choice of his female ministers and lieutenants in the party apparatus. They are all his age or younger, without any significant professional experience outside of the party, and have become the object of increasingly popular satirical sketches performed by the country’s top comedians. Italian women politicians of the past were very few, generally middle aged, and homely but they we were women who commanded respect (Nilda Jiotti, Tina Anselmi, Emma Bonino). The current ministers are looked upon as Renzi’s girls.

If Renzi or anyone else wants to change Italy he’ll have to go way beyond optics and he’ll have to take on centers of power that are much stronger and more extensive than Italy’s working class and its unions, which are the adversaries hit by Renzi’s “Jobs Act” and the remnant of what Roger Cohen remembers as a powerful social force from his time in Italy thirty years ago. Not that the Italian unions are not to be criticized. They are just as corrupt as the rest of Italian society and as a result they have lost much of their claim to worker loyalty and thus of their ability to represent the working class. But the unions and the working class ae not the power centers that are preventing change in Italy.

The power behind the national inertia lies elsewhere: industrialists who do not invest in innovation and send their profits to tax havens; rampant tax evasion; a bloated and inefficient public bureaucracy many of whose employees hold off-the-books second jobs in the private sector because their public salaries are pitifully low; a judicial system that seems deliberately designed to unfairly punish the weak and absolve the powerful; a university hiring system based on cronyism rather than merit; the tax free commercial property and political influence of the Catholic Church.

These are just some of the real power centers that Renzi as of yet has failed to take on. He’s had a small victory beating up on the unions with the Jobs Act but real change will be a lot harder and so far he hasn’t shown any interest in achieving it. Renzi’s optics are good but even though he comes from the home of the famous Florentine T-bone steak, he’s way short on beef.

Fai “Tua sorella era l’anima della famiglia.” That was the spontaneous response of my wife on hearing of the recent death of the second of my five sisters. A few days later, I was sitting in the administrative office of the parish church in Richmond, Virginia, together with her eldest daughter and my brother, sharing our thoughts about Liz with Father Mike, whom she had come to know and admire during her last six months in Richmond. He was gathering information and memories to use in his funeral homily. “My Italian wife,” I said in a breaking voice, “called Liz the soul of our family,” and I realized right away that, as they say, something was lost in my translation. “Soul”, as I was accustomed to using it, wasn’t the same as “anima”.

When I got back home, I went to the dictionaries. The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology has “soul” dating back to 1121, developed from the Old English sawol meaning “the spiritual and emotional part of a person.” ”Anima “has no entry of its own but the entry for “animal” says that it derives from the Latin animalis “from anima, life, breath, which is related to animus mind, spirit.” The Devoto-Oli Italian dictionary adds some interesting nuances for “anima”- “the essence, the fundamental impulse, the promoter. … Of the artist who transmits life, force, feeling to her works.” That was Liz – more than our soul she was our breath of life

Liz had a superabundance of life, of vitality, and she transmitted it to everyone she came into contact with, to all the people she “collected,” as her daughter Sarah told Father Mike. And first and foremost to her siblings. Like all siblings, we have always had our disagreements and moments of disappointment and conflict with one another. Liz’s vital curiosity was sometimes felt to be intrusive and occasionally ruffled feathers and hurt feelings. But she never stopped reaching out to each and all of us, held and showed a keen interest in each of her nieces and nephews and her “grands,” starting with her own splendid grandchildren but including all the children of her nieces and nephews. She was the heart of our network, the spirit that kept the lines of communication up and running. I think that’s what Roberta meant, and she was right.

As the written and spoken testimonials have poured in in the two weeks since she died – from her fellow advocates for Hispanic immigrants, from friends and neighbors, former students, her children’s friends from their teenage years, from the Governor of Maryland and a US senator – we have learned, or been reminded, that Liz’s vitality also touched innumerable people outside of our family. That is a great source of comfort. We can find solace for our loss in the knowledge that her overflowing vitality lives on, is still there for us to draw on.

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Fai clic qui p Getting to No

 

Thirty or forty years ago, a couple of Harvard professors made names for themselves (both of which I now forget) and a lot of money by writing a book on negotiation called “Getting to Yes.”

My problem, however, in contract negotiations for translation jobs, has frequently been the opposite: getting to no. Not that my objective has been to make the negotiations fail, quite the contrary. Like most translators, I’m always looking for work and am happy to find it. But our lack of contracting power inevitably makes it difficult for translators to say no to just about any proposed terms. We’re just the gals and guys who can’t say no.

I’m happy to report today that my time has come, and I have to admit that getting to no is a much better feeling than I ever would have thought.

In a nutshell, I was recently offered the chance to translate a new Italian novel by a publisher for whom I have already translated three books (one novel and two non-fiction). The publisher is based in Rome but has created a US affiliate that publishes English translations of contemporary European fiction. When I did my first job for them in 2010, they paid me 10 US cents a word, with no royalty, and I had to give them the copyright to my translation, something I have since learned that at least one other American translator refused to do. She got to no very quickly.

Without going into further detail, when they offered me this new job I asked for a little more money and to keep the copyright, specifying that I was willing to negotiate. The response came back that they couldn’t agree to more money or to let me keep the copyright because “all our translators work for the same terms and we can’t make exceptions.” The “same terms” are the terms we agreed to in 2010.

So I have finally gotten to no. Why? Several reasons. Other publishers pay more and they let me keep the copyright on my work (the “flour from my sack,” as the Italians say). Because in 2010 ten US cents were worth about nine Euro cents and now they’re worth 6.5 Euro cents, and I live in Euros (as does the Italian publisher, of course). But most of all, because I want to experience the freedom of saying no.

The thing about saying no is that you don’t know now what it will lead to in the future and you will never know in the future what might have happened if you had said yes. It’s a double whammy from the uncertainty principle.  Since I’m risk averse and have always had an underdose of self-confidence, I’ve always gone for the certainty of yes.

Strangely enough, however, I am thoroughly enjoying having gotten to no. Who knows what might come along to replace the certainty of the underpaid work I would have accepted by saying yes. And that’s the best part of it all. By saying no I’ve expressed my confidence that whatever comes along will be better than the certain outcome I would have accepted by getting to yes. I feel optimistic and confident instead of feeling weak and under-appreciated. I never would have believed it, but getting to no is actually a no-brainer.

 

 

 

 

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