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The Argentine literary tradition was believed by many, including many Argentines, to be concerned with a national imaginary in which the gauchos and the pampas and the tango were fundamental tropes.

Adam Morris

So likewise in João Gilberto Noll, readers shouldn’t expect samba and Carnival and football. The Brazilian national identity is not one of his primary concerns.
ADAM MORRIS

Carnival Concern Football Identify Likewise National Noll Primary Reader Samba
English can be tricky because there are so many false cognates, but sometimes, as long the idea conveyed is not wrong, these false cognates can themselves offer synonyms or lead to a better alternative word or phrase in translation.
ADAM MORRIS

Alternative Cognate Conveyed English False Idea Long Sometimes Tricky
And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country.
ADAM MORRIS

Country Matter Necessarily Particular Relational Universal
If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.
ADAM MORRIS

Broadly Country Likely Noll People Translated Writing
One of my methods for developing my own voice in fiction, a process I am taking very slowly and deliberately, is through these very intense encounters with certain writers.
ADAM MORRIS

Author Encounter Fiction Inflected Published Reading Translating Work Writer
This makes his writing very pleasing to read: João Gilberto Noll pays attention to detail, but only to certain details. And it’s never easy to foresee which details will send the narrator or the plot in an unsuspected direction.
ADAM MORRIS

Attention Easy Make Pleasing Read Writing
Jorge Luis Borges was lamenting a variety of Orientalism that was used to measure the alleged authenticity of Argentine and Latin American writers in the midcentury.
ADAM MORRIS

Alleged Authenticity Lamenting Latin Measure Tradition Variety
Strength and power in fiction is being able to resist these intoxicating voices, recognizing that they are the signatures of other writers and not one’s own.
ADAM MORRIS

Fiction Intoxicating Own Power Progress Recognizing Resist Signature Strength Voice Writer
Once I looked into it, I was taken aback to learn that pretty much nothing by Joao Gilberto Noll was available in English translation.
ADAM MORRIS

Aback Available Determined Injustice Looked Nothing Pretty Taken
English offers both obscurity and dark or darkness, and some translators will tell you the Latinate word is generally reserved for poetic and figurative expressions, while the Germanic word is used for colloquial and idiomatic use.
ADAM MORRIS

Both Darkness English Idiomatic Obscurity Offer Reserved Translator Use
I was confident that I could find an editor and the readership for a translation
ADAM MORRIS

Confident Editor Readership Translation
I don’t think there’s anything that I would call essentially Brazilian in João Gilberto Noll work. In that regard, it translates very well to a cosmopolitan audience.
ADAM MORRIS

Anything Audience Cosmopolitan Essentially Noll Regard Think Translate Work
The transcendent aspect of the psychedelic experience is totally absent.
ADAM MORRIS

Absent Aspect Experience Psychedelic Totally Transcendent
Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it’s not prerequisite for understanding it.
ADAM MORRIS

Context Critic Helpful Novel Political Prerequisite True Understanding
I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.
ADAM MORRIS

Best Closely Think Thinking Translation Translator Working Writer Yield
I translated the novel and still it remains a mystery as to how exactly how this works. Noll thinks more like an experimental filmmaker than a novelist.
ADAM MORRIS

Exactly Experience Filmmaker Mystery Novelist Think Translate Work

The Argentine literary tradition was believed by many, including many Argentines, to be concerned with a national imaginary in which the gauchos and the pampas and the tango were fundamental tropes.

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The Argentine literary tradition was believed by many, including many Argentines, to be concerned with a national imaginary in which the gauchos and the pampas and the tango were fundamental tropes.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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