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Natural History by Joan Perucho6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() I decided to have a look at the holdings of Rosenthal’s translation of Víctor Català’s Solitud, published by Readers International Editions in 1992. When I realized that the archive of the legendary translator David Rosenthal is held at the Biblioteca d’Humanitats at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, I became intrigued with the possibility of gaining insight into his decision-making process, of shedding light on how Rosenthal resolved what David Bellos has termed, “the unfathomable puzzle of how we make ourselves understood to others and to ourselves.” ![]() In my current doctoral research, I am immensely grateful for the chance to “get to know” a deceased author through the course of reading fifty years of his correspondence, and as a result I’ve begun to be slightly more intentional about saving drafts, at least digitally. However, what are the trade-offs of our embrace of technology? At times I’ve felt guilty of tossing out the baby with the bath water, when overwriting drafts in such a way that I’d effectively erased my process. ![]() Despite the prevailing idea that translations age faster and more poorly than originals-part of the “fetishization of the perfect translation” as Tess Lewis aptly described it-I believe retranslation and respect for translation history need not be antagonistic.Īs 21 st-century translators, I think we can all agree on the advantages of the computer age in terms of ease of research and delivery. ![]()
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