And wasn’t the splendor of translation this very thing—to discover sentences this beautiful and then have the chance to make someone else hear their beauty who had yet to hear it? To arrive, at least once, at a moment this intimate and singular, which would not be possible without these words arranged in this order on this page?
I recently relived this splendor again translating the prose of Chilean writer Nona Fernandez. Rearranging words does not seem like a form of transfixing intimacy with another person, and yet it is! Trying to intuit why they chose one word or phrase before another, it's like trying to replicate the gate of a person's walk down the street, the length of their stride.
Chantel liked this
