Have You Ever Bought/Read a Book Because of the Translator?

[Jimmy]

Have you ever read a book more because of the translator than because of the original book? If so, which books?

I have experienced this several times... the one that sticks out is Anne Carson's translation of Sappho. But also sometimes I will like a more obscure author and find out that the translator has translated other books by other obscure authors I had never heard of. In those cases, it's less that I'm reading because of the translator, but more that the translator has introduced me to authors I had never heard of. An example of this is when I read Susan Bernofsky's translation of Walser, it got me curious about the other authors she translated. That's how I discovered Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck.

[Nathanimal]

Kind of. When I read The Crab Nebula, translated by Jordan Stump, I checked out what other books he'd translated and stumbled onto Hôtel Splendid. I wasn't curious about Stump's other translations because of his translation work, though it's stellar as far as I can tell, but because I was interested to see what other contemporary French authors he might've discovered.

So in other words: me too.

[Bryn]

Yes, I guess so: that must be the old translators of epic.

Gavin Douglas, 'The Aeneid' (1513) Volume 1: Introduction, Books I - VIII
Chapman's Homer, and Golding's Ovid. Add Pope's Iliad.

These are cases where the translation is more the draw than the original, for me.

[Nate D]

I think I'd read anything translated (hopefully meaning recommended) by Mirra Ginsberg, my favorite translator of 20th century Russian lit.

[Nate D]

And that's a pretty cool path to Marie Redonnet, Other Nate. That book is great, as are Forever Valley and Nevermore.

[Larissa]

There are a handful of translators who I have actively sought out, in part because in many cases, they are one of very few people translating from a particular language. This was particularly true when I was first trying to track down English translations of contemporary Icelandic literature--Bernard Scudder was a really active translator from Icelandic and also translated an unusually wide range of genres. He'd translate a crime novel by Arnaldur Indriðason and then a Old Norse saga and then a classic work of contemporary fiction. So I often picked up books just because he translated them.

[Larissa]

Another translator whose work I often seek out is Edith Grossman--her updated Don Quixote is brilliant, and as a result, I picked up The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqrol by Alvaro Mutis and Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo.

[Jimmy]

I'm the opposite. I will not read it if it's translated by Bly.

[Daniela]

Anything translated by Howard Curtis!

[Stujallen]

Very true Daniela

[Daniela]

I'm reading Curtis' translation of In the Sea There are Crocodiles, by Italian writer Fabio Geda. I read it in Italian some years ago, the immediacy and emotion shine through beautifully in his translation. And he's equally good at translating books with complex plots and language, Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa is an excellent example.

[Jessica]

Jimmy wrote: "I'm the opposite. I will not read it if it's translated by Bly."

I am also not a fan of Bly as translator.

[[deleted user]]

I'd be interested to know how readers evaluate a translation as successful or not.

Is a "great" translation a text that strikes them as "great" to read in English? Or is it based on a comparative reading of the text in both its source and translated languages? Are we evaluating the craft of the translator in "writing" English, or in "translating" the source-text language into English?

This seems an important difference, to me, as a reader looking to read a good "translation" from another language.