Translating Myself and Others

by Jhumpa Lahiri

writing. I think of writing and translating as two aspects of the same activity, two faces of the same coin, or maybe two strokes, exercising distinct but complementary strengths, that allow me to swim greater distances, and at greater depths, through the mysterious element of language.

The Italian language did not simply change my life; it gave me a second life, an extra life.

Why Italian? I’d sum it up this way: to open doors, to see differently, to graft myself onto another.

Writing is a way to salvage life, to give it form and meaning. It exposes what we have hidden, unearths what we have neglected, misremembered, denied. It is a method of capturing, of pinning down, but it is also a form of truth, of liberation.

For to translate is to look into a mirror and see someone other than oneself.