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The NYRB and Tim Parks on Primo Levi and His Invisible Translators

11/19/2015

8 Comments

 
​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.
8 Comments
Louise Rogers Lalaurie link
11/20/2015 11:49:38 pm

Heartily agree. A golden opportunity to review literary translations "properly", wasted.

Reply
Tim Parks
11/21/2015 04:00:52 am

I'm intrigued by the indignation here. Let me set a few things straight.

First, about half of the work published in the Collected Works had not been translated before, the essays and many of the short stories.

Second, my brief was to say something which took the whole collection and indeed the life into account. I had 4000 words to do so. I read two biographies, a book about Levi's brief period as a partisan. Since much of the Levi criticism has tended to hagiography I was eager to go beyond that. For me the news here was above all that all the work was brought together. My overview is I think rather different from those offered by other writers.

There were ten translators. The most celebrated work, If This Is a Man was not retranslated but 'adjusted'.

You say you cannot know if I read the translations. Yet I mention Morrison's preface and all quotations are taken from these new editions. Few other reviews quoted from any but the most famous works.

Why did I not mention the translators? As you will have noticed, on reviewing Nievo for the NYRB I talked about the special difficulties of translating Nievo. There are no such difficulties here. The translations are solid but not especially distinguished. I myself have always felt my translation work was well done if a reviewer felt free to concentrate on the book, the book being always more interesting than the translation. I have never complained about not being mentioned as a translator and never shall.

best regards...

Reply
Louise Rogers Lalaurie link
11/21/2015 06:34:55 am

I agree, Tim, that if a review of a translated book 'gets' what the author is all about and quotes enthusiastically from the translation, then we've done our job. But your comments indicate that you think the quality of the translation important: surely, then, the translator deserves to be named alongside the author? Wanting translators to be named isn't immodest, it's about securing proper recognition for our profession (and taking whatever praise or criticism comes our way as a result).

Reply
Tim Parks
11/21/2015 06:56:58 am

In general I do name translators. In this case there were 10 of them and the translations are uneven. If I mention one I must mention all. If I mention all I must talk of their different qualities. I must also wonder about the overall edit, since there were clearly editing issues here (there would have been any number of things to discuss). However, I have only a limited number of words and was eager to focus on questions that other reviewers of Levi never focus on, but that seem to me important. Maybe some time I'll put together a blog to comment the translations. However, this was a completely different case from the Nievo translation, where an astonishingly complex and very long text had been courageously and resourcefully translated by Federika Randall. It's nice to praise, less fun to pick nits. And there is so much to be said still about Levi and the Levi phenomenon without measuring the qualities of translator 5 against translator 7.

Reply
Margaret Carson
11/29/2015 11:26:16 am

Besides not naming any of the translators, or commenting on Ann Goldstein's extraordinary editorship, at no point in your review do you even use the word "translation" to refer The Complete Works of Primo Levi, which seems odd, considering the 100,000+ words that Levi did not write in English.

Louise Rogers Lalaurie link
11/21/2015 07:51:16 am

Agree that picking holes in a poor translation is unappetising work, and your point about the need to tease out the role of the copy editor is very valid. Hope you time to write the blog piece!

Reply
Tim Parks
11/21/2015 09:46:27 am

Thanks Louise. The truth is I have been thinking for a long time of trying to say something sensible about the way translation is being done in the USA at the moment (where the style is notably different from that in the UK). In particular there is a major problem of register with translations from the Italian. The trouble is these are very tricky things to get across to a non-translating public. There is also the fact that one risks upsetting a lot of people... In general, though, I don't think translators are much helped by a token pat on the back or a pinch in the ribs (often from reviewers who are hardly in a position to appreciate what is going on). One has to integrate translation comment with a discussion of how a style works, and the problem is always space. Oh well. Onward!

Reply
Louise Rogers Lalaurie link
11/21/2015 01:37:56 pm

You point up the difficulties/issues of reviewing translations very cogently. It is a tricky business. Safest perhaps (!) simply to credit the translator for the public at large and, as you say, keep the detailed critique for the blogosphere or more specialist literary journals. And agreed, no one wants to upset anyone - especially when the only people properly qualified to assess a translation are generally not reviewers but the translator's colleagues... Reviewers need to think more carefully about forms of words that can acknowledge successful translations or hint gently at possible shortcomings...




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    Gregory Conti. Translator. Teaches at University of Perugia and University of Rochester in Arezzo. Lives in Perugia, Italy.

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