"We're proud to present audio of renowned author, translator, and
MacArthur "Genuis" Lydia Davis, who discussed her acclaimed new
translation of Madame Bovary last week as part of the
Center's Two Voices events series in San Francisco....For those who
love the minutia of translation, this is audio for you...For a little
context, this is what Davis said about her work on Bovary in
her introduction to a selection of that book that we published in the
most recent TWO LINES. She writes, "[in translating Madame Bovary] I
tried to depart as little as possible from the way the sentences
unfolded in the original, and to add and subtract nothing . . . doing
my best to compose a piece of writing that was strong, natural, and
effective in English." And then, later in the same introduction, "It is
surprising, really, how many translators do not take this
approach."[...] She also candidly discussed her use of previous
translations, saying she wasn't afraid to do a little borrowing from
time to time: "When I had a real problem I would look at all of them,
always hoping that someone would either have an insight into what it
meant or how it should be translated, or just a nice phrase that I
could lift. And I wasn't embarrassed to lift. In the process of looking
at them, I would see that they lifted from each other.". And
she even discussed geeking out over seeing Nabokov's notes on Bovary
and his marginalia on a translation of it: "He was
quite helpful, but then I trusted him too much. And I found that he
wasn't really always right, so I had to back off a little bit from my
utter trust. I went to the fanatical extreme for a while, I discovered
that the public library at 42nd St. in New York had his annotated copy
of Eleanor Marx' translation of Madame Bovary . . . he got very annoyed
with her, and he would write in his own preferences."[...it] should
be heard aloud."