Alison Entrekin on Near to the Wild Heart

This site is, if anything, now a collection of links to Clarice Lispector media. Here is Alison Entrekin, translator of Near to the Wild Heart (Lispector’s first novel, and an amazing one at that) on the process of translating Lispector.

SG Is there anything that you feel didn’t translate well from the Portuguese into the English in Near to the Wild Heart, and if so, what were the obstacles?

AE I don’t really remember anything specific that I was terribly distraught about, but I do feel that, despite my best efforts to preserve her idiosyncrasies, the translation suffered certain losses. To some extent, this is all in a translator’s day’s work, as no language is a mirror copy of another, but with Clarice it is exacerbated by the fact that she frequently used words that could be interpreted in a number of ways. That’s fine when you’re reading her—a discerning reader will register several of those nuances and move on. When you have to translate her, it’s a different story. Often there isn’t a corresponding word or phrase that offers all of the possibilities contained in the original. So you have to choose—which is a very subjective process in itself—and, in so doing, you automatically narrow her down, pin her to what you think is most important.

SG What is the editing process like for translation? Did you and Benjamin Moser work together closely on this, and was there anything about which you strongly disagreed?

AE Editors, in my experience, are very different animals. Some are hands-off, some are hands-on, but most of them don’t have access to the original, so anything they say or suggest is speculative. It was completely different with Ben, as he knows Clarice’s work back to front in the original. I found the process a lot simpler, because I didn’t have to explain the things that I would have had to if he didn’t speak Portuguese. He was a thorough reader and asked pertinent questions, but I didn’t feel that he was overly intrusive as an editor. I think we’re pretty much on the same page in terms of approach. I liked his translation of The Hour of the Star, incidentally, which I think is telling.

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