At Morningside, we can’t help but get excited when our industry is mentioned in a New York Times op-ed. On Saturday, Michael Cunningham, author of “The Hours,” wrote a great piece on the art of translating literature.
An excerpt:
“Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear. Ideally, a sentence read aloud, in a foreign language, should still sound like something, even if the listener has no idea what it is he or she is being told…You could probably say that meaning is the force we employ, and music is the seduction. It is the translator’s job to reproduce the force as well as the music.”
Here is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/opinion/03cunningham.html