The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction

by Suzanne Jill Levine

A classic study of the art of translation from one of our greatest translators.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Literary Criticism

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1991

About the author

Suzanne Jill Levine is a leading translator of Latin American literature, and professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara where she directs a Translation Studies doctoral program. Her scholarly and critical works include her award-winning literary biography Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman (FSG & Faber& Faber, 2000) and her groundbreaking book on the poetics of translation The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction (published in 1991 and reissued this year by Dalkey Archive Press, along with her classic translations of novels by Manuel Puig).

Her many honors include National Endowment for the Arts and NEH fellowship and research grants, the first PEN USA West Prize for Literary Translation (1989), the PEN American Center Career Achievement award (1996), and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. She has just completed a five volume project as general editor of the works of Borges for Penguin Classics.

(from http://www.complit.ucsb.edu/projects/...)

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

We translate to be translated.

Suzanne Jill Levine is Rabelasian/Shandian translator. Extraordinaire. At the time of this book (1991) she had closelaborated with Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Manuel Puig, and Severo Sarduy ; and since then she’s had Dalkey pub her impossible and unreadababble Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel. I think she’s just great.

So you should be reading her book on translation if you are interested in translation, in puns, in linguistic parody, in imperial linguist relations (translating the parodied back into the imperial (English) language!), the self-translation question (of Joyce, of Beckett, of Nabokov, of Federman), the question of a woman translating the discourse of men. At any rate, there’s some complicated stuff in here. Literalist/purists/semantic=contentists will be aghast at what goes on behind the scenes, but at least some of these are authorized by the author. And yes, Levine is a writer first ; there are many versions lying under the ‘original’ (one version among many).

Here’s a video of Levine from recent ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzhvi...

Here’s a review from Three Percent ::
http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

And an interview at Words without Borders ::
http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/ar...

Basically, I’ll be picking up every= and anything with her name on it. I mean, you’ve read Three Trapped Tigers and/or Infante's Inferno? Right?

[Chad Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jill's an amazing translator, and is equally amazing at describing the complicated choices that go into making a great translation. This collection of essays mainly focuses on three authors she worked with--Severo Sarduy, G. Cabrera Infante, and Manuel Puig--examining title choices (how Puig's "Painted Lips" became "Heartbreak Tango"), the "untranslatable" (puns! see everything GCI ever wrote), and the nature of closelaboration and the subversive, creative acts that go into translation.

I love GCI--especially Three Trapped Tigers--but some of my favorite parts were the essays on Puig's Heartbreak Tango and Buenos Aires Affair. But regardless, the whole book is interesting, especially in the way SJL reveals her personal interactions with the authors, how she came to certain choices, etc. Definitely recommend this to anyone interested in getting into translation . . .

[Claire Abs]

to-read