The Travails of Translation

I saw Erica Mena’s extremely generous take on an awful situation linked to at Constant Conversation, and I wanted to put it up here too:

Which brings me to the second thing. I was notified yesterday that I will not be allowed to publish my translation of the book Tres. As I alluded to above, I’ve had the translation finished for several years (since early 2008, actually). Rights are complicated. Bolaño has gained a huge amount of fame in the past few years and there is a lot at stake in terms of his reputation. Probably in terms of money as well, though as a translator that has never figured into my consideration (I came into this knowing there is no money to be made in the translation of poetry). In fact, I would happily give my translation away were I permitted to do so. But that’s neither here nor there. After having fallen in love with this work, studied it critically, written my dissertation on it, translated it and spent years waiting to know what its fate will be, I was told yesterday that a new translation will be commissioned by the translator who did his first book of poetry to be published in English. This is great news, in that these books will finally be made available to English readers. But devastating for me.

I suppose this is the rights-holders’ prerogative, and I certainly don’t have all the facts of this situation, but on the face of it this sounds awful.

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