Friends true and false
Translation: Kristin Addis
Abstract
After a meeting of the translators of Mercè Rodoreda in December of last year, writer Jaume Cabré reflects on translation. For Cabré, the grandeur of the work of the translator lies in maintaining a discrete transparency in order to allow his text, that is, the translation, to move the reader. The translator wishes to evoke in the readers of his language emotions similar to those that the original text evokes in its readers.
The author also discusses other topics related to translation, specifically, the great tradition of the translation of minority languages and a phenomenon he describes as curious: the aging of a translation before that of the original work, which means that every two or three generations, works that have already been translated are translated again.
Cabré communicates his admiration for translators and exemplifies it in the meeting that he himself had a few years ago with translators of his work.
